Size & Seek
by Bibliotecaria.D
Summary: If you give a Shattered Glass cityformer three G1 Seekers, at least he'll have a spare.
1. Chapter 1

**Title: **Size & Seek

**Warning:** **Read this fic at your own risk.**  
><em>Dark!Fic<br>Size Kink  
>Medical(Mechanical) Gore<br>Body Fluids  
>InvoluntaryNonconsensual/Rape  
>Fear<br>Mind Games/Manipulation  
>BDSM<em>

Also, some bad science.

There is no Shattered Glass Metroplex or his minions, so I'm doing a lot of research and making it up as I go.

**Rating:** R

**Continuity: **G1 (Footnotes AU) / Shattered Glass

It is not necessary to read the Footnotes series to understand this fic, but it is set in the same universe. Some of the world-building is involved.

**Characters:** Starscream, Thundercracker, Skywarp, Metroplex, Ratchet, Scamper, Slammer, Six-Gun

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Motivation (Prompt): ** Kinkmeme prompt. _If you give a Shattered Glass cityformer three G1 Seekers, at least he'll have a spare._

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><p><strong>[* * * * *]<strong>

_From TFWiki –  
>joor = 6 hours<br>cycle = 1.25 hours  
>breem = 8.3 minutes<br>klik = 1.2 minutes_

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><p>It wasn't the strangest situation they'd ever been in. No, Skywarp rather thought that honor went to the time Thundercracker had gotten the Glitz Virus. It had been severely weird to be out-airheaded by Thundercracker. Starscream had actually requested a transfer to another trine in the first two days before somebody finally diagnosed why half the Decepticon fleet had discovered their previously-unknown attraction to shiny objects. Skywarp most strongly remembered getting really annoyed by the medical mech who wouldn't leave him alone. He had a short attention span; that did <em>not<em> mean he had been infected. He'd spent the entire time Thundercracker was down in defragment getting chased around Darkmount by an ever-increasing horde of angry medics who wouldn't take "I'm like this all the time!" as an answer.

Decepticon medics were scary. Decepticon medics in groups(1) were enough to make Skywarp live in Starscream's shadow for days at a time, which hadn't made his wingleader any more inclined to cancel the transfer request. It took far too long for Thundercracker to get out of defragment and vouch for Skywarp's normal behavior. Starscream had sarcastically denied any knowledge of what constituted _normal_ for Skywarp when the medics demanded a statement. It would have made Skywarp angry, but he'd been too unnerved at the time to do more than yelp and flee. Besides, he had been designed to be unpredictable. Starscream might have been intentionally tormenting him, but likely he was telling the truth, too.

By the time Thundercracker rescued him, Skywarp had developed a seriously bizarre behaviorism for a flyer. Having found by trial and error - that is, teleporting screaming a hair away from capture - that the medics checked small, confined spaces last, he'd taken to finding and staying in the most securely closed-off rooms in the base. Seekers didn't recharge or hide in tiny rooms and cubbyholes because most of them were claustrophobic. Given the choice between claustrophobia and iatrophobia, however, Skywarp picked the fear of enclosed spaces. Walls might close in, but they weren't going to _help him_ against his will. And he got used to the claustrophobia, but he'd never gotten over his fear of medics.

So this wasn't the strangest situation they'd ever been in. Thundercracker wasn't squealing over and chasing his own wingtips. Starscream wasn't any more enraged than usual. Skywarp wasn't being hunted _for your_ _own good_.

Although the situation did rank pretty high on Skywarp's personal list of strange. There had been a swirling vortex of mad science(2) that picked them up and shook them, then dumped them in a crunching pile. It left all three jets doubled over on the ground. They'd seen triple of absolutely nothing much, excluding error messages. Those they saw - and heard and, oh worse, _felt_ - everywhere, painting their internal viewscapes lurid, strobing colors that hadn't helped the rocking nausea any. They'd clutched dirt and prayed in garbled, expletive-laden sincerity to whomever listened that _gravity should please start making sense now, please and thank you, sir, may I have another? Oh, Primus, my **tanks**…_

That hadn't been any fun. Dizzy and sick as their circuitry insisted that there were four centers of gravity all at right angles, they'd gradually graduated to sitting up. They'd braced against each other and whimpered for a while, helplessly unable to pin down the wavering horizon line that all their instrumentation blandly told them was under their feet.

Starscream had gagged and panicked as much as they, but he had a weird mind. All sciency and analytical once he got that first hysterical period out of the way. He'd fumbled for them, voice too unsteady to give them instructions they couldn't listen to without nauseating interference from their screwed-up audio receptors. Thundercracker had purged his tanks of half-processed energon with the first movement - moving by themselves had been bad enough, but getting pulled on jolted _everything_ out of whack - but Starscream was persistent. Skywarp and Thundercracker had whined and complained, and he'd hoarsely whispered a rain of curses and orders down on their idiot heads. He tugged them by tiny increments into some sort of recovery position: their heads between their knees, lined up with the tops of their helms pressed between the next mech's wings.

Having his knee joints clamped around his head had helped. It had proven that his head wasn't really moving, something that had been in real doubt when he'd been just laying there. He could see and feel dirt beneath his thrusters, right there before his optics. His aft was planted in that same dirt. It gave him direction: that there stuff? Yeah, that. That was _down_. Down meant gravity. With his head not wobbling like a bobble-head on a car dashboard, it was a relief to realize there was one reliable direction. Sitting like that forced his instrumentation to reboot as his optics steadily fed the same data into his flight computer and assorted calculations for his teleportation device's model projection.

Sitting there with the top of his head pressed between Starscream's wings, Thundercracker's head firm in the center of his own back, Skywarp had quietly moaned his misery for who-knows-how long. His systems peaked and spun down, cycled up and turned almost off, over and over again. Onboard computers fought a battle of numbers and sensation, and he could barely think straight when they prodded him for decisions.

**Direction: Y/N? **

**Yes. **

**Horizonline: Y/N? **

**No.** _I'm not level._

**Horizonline: Y/N? **

**No. ** _That's still not level._

**Horizonline: Y/N? **

**No.** _Blurgh, that's even worse._ **Command order: realignment sequence: interrupt. Direct query: optical array status?**

**Optical array: 75% power. **

_Malfunctioning, but not that bad._ **Direct query: audio array status?**

**Audio array: 55% power. **

_That's a problem, alright._ **Command order: audio array: reboot hardware. **

**Audio array: reboot hardware: Y/N?**

**Yes.**

**Audio array: reboot completed. **

**Direct query: audio array status?**

**Audio array: 85% power.**

**Command order: realignment sequence: resume.**

**Horizonline: Y/N? **

**No. ** _Please don't do that again, me. I don't like that._ **Command order: realignment sequence: interrupt. Direct query: audio array processor status?**

**Audio array processor: 25% operational. **

_Okay, ouch. No wonder._ **Command** **order: audio array processor: scan software. **

**Audio array: initiate scan: Y/N? **

**Yes. **

**Audio array processor: scan completed. Data error: 14b.6. Corrupt code: line 202, 306, 5540, 5541, 5542…**

_…really ouch._ **Retrieval order: backup management log: audio array processor code backup copy.**

**Audio array processor: retrieval order: backup management log: audio array processor code backup copy:**

** -Error warning: backup copy update required. Backup maintenance cycle: Y/N?**

_What?_ ** No.** _Yeah, because I'd be asking for my backup if I had solid code. Like that makes any sense. No, I don't want to run backup maintenance right now!_ **Retrieval order: backup management log: audio array processor code backup copy.**

**Audio array processor: retrieval order: backup management log: audio array processor code backup copy:**

** -Error warning: backup copy update required. Maintenance backup cycle: Y/N?**

**No. **_No! No, no, and NO. Oh, for the love of…_ **Command order: backup management log: update override. **

**Backup management log: update override: access denied. **

_Is it possible to kill myself? Would anybody mind? I wouldn't._ **Command order: backup management log: backup files: scan file data.**

**Backup management log: backup files: initiate file scan: Y/N?**

**Yes. **_Do it, or I'll shoot you! Myself. Whatever!_

**Backup management log: backup files: file scan completed. Data error: not detected.**

_Yes! Thank you, Primus!_

**-Error warning: backup files update required. Backup maintenance cycle: Y/N?**

_I take that back. Bad Primus._ **No. Command order: backup management log: scan software.**

**Backup management log: initiate file scan: Y/N?**

**Yes.** _I'd pray to you right now, Primus, but I think you've got it out for me._

**Backup management log: scan completed. Data error: 12a.55. An error occurred during automatic file extraction.**

_A decompression error? Ah, frag._ **Command order: backup management log: manual access.**

**Backup management log: manual access: Y/N?**

**Yes. ** _Manually retrieving backup files…this is going to take forever._

Time blurred as badly as the dirt between his thrusters, and Skywarp fought a twitching internal battle of royally messed up data. His only comfort came from the intimate contact from in front and behind. Thundercracker's systems throbbed throaty, aggravated rumbles directly into his main vertical support structure. His internals raggedly jumped, catching his wingmate's system rhythm bit by bit until they synced. It was a familiar feeling, however awful the experience was currently. Skywarp's head buzzed unpleasantly against Starscream's faster, more stymied system turnover. Starscream could feel Thundercracker through Skywarp, but he'd always resisted syncing with them. Again, it was a familiar happening: two wingmates trying through sound and touch to wrestle their third wingmate into their pattern. It just felt particularly upsetting right now because they shared queasy sensations that doubled and tripled with the sharing.

Thundercracker had better system connection than their trineleader, and the gut-level _shunk_ as he wrestled one of his flight systems under control could be physically felt. Skywarp's systems sputtered and tried to turn over spontaneously in the middle of a downdrift, frantically reversing to match the new rhythm. The three Decepticons moved uneasily, systems out of alignment and struggling for rhythm, but the dull throbbing settled slowly. It was…a little better.

Starscream wordlessly pinged a piece of code at them both, the subtler _tuhtuhtuh_ of cerebral circuitry realigning with his body functions permeating them all. Their wingleader sorted through codes and programs grimly, leaving physical systems to them as he tore out corrupted data and manually replaced it with backups and newly rewritten lines. Internal system boards glowed painful neon colors, pulsating with error messages and system refusals as he overrode his onboard computer and attacked his own programming. His focus hurt with its intensity, as upsetting mentally as physically fighting out-of-tune body parts was for Thundercracker. The Decepticon Air Commander's face was a mask of inward-turned anger and raw nerves. Thundercracker just retched fuel again, this time down Skywarp's back, and hiccupped as his energon intakes noisily gulped and rejected air.

Skywarp balanced between them, acting as a buffer cushion between Thundercracker's systems and Starscream's furious thought. He hazily accepted their modifications and let the complex drumming of their bodies wash through him. His systems were unfastened, loose at the seams, and his wingmates were tightening him down. They were all pretty bad off. He didn't know why, but he'd been hit worst of all them. Possibly it was because of the nature of his teleportation device. The spacebridge always mucked with his spatial sense, and the vortex that had grabbed them? Definitely worse than the spacebridge by itself. It was like comparing a turbofox to Bruticus: one would bite his ankle, and the other would punt him straight into the arms of evil medics. That vortex was the evil medic Bruticus of transportation.

One thing he knew for sure: this wasn't Cybertron. That was where they were supposed to go, but Cybertron didn't have dirt. And, he realized when he finally dared to lift his head in defiance of Starscream's grunt of protest, it didn't have giant feet. Not that giant, anyway. Not even an evil medic Bruticus would have feet the size of – of - well, they were really big.

"Uh…guys?" he pushed out, static lacing his voice. With his audios buzzing so loudly, he wasn't sure if that was audio or vocalizer damage. He absently started a chain of query/command orders to find out, but most of his attention was directed up. And up. And further upward, to where a face the size of - oh, very big. He'd have preferred an entire medical bay of evil medics to this kind of big.

Especially since the Autobot insignia below that face was roughly the size of a Seeker smushed flat. Skywarp had no way to verify that size comparison, but it felt viscerally correct. His body rattled, shuddered, and went terribly still. Terrible because that kind of stillness wasn't natural, and pressed against and synced with him as they were, it struck his wingmates' systems like a sledgehammer of dread. Skywarp wasn't just afraid. Skywarp was _terrified_.

Even through the shock and static, he could hear Starscream's resigned sigh. "I don't want to look up, do I."

Thundercracker's head raised, winching up with a lot of effort against nausea and low-fuel warnings. He paused. His head dropped back down like a stone. "No," he said, deep voice flatly _pong_ing off Skywarp's armor. It shivered through their internal systems.

Of course Starscream looked. If he backed down from facing fear, he'd have never made it to Second in Command of the Decepticons. He liked to know what direction to dodge in, after all. But it seemed that there wouldn't be a lot of dodging to be done in this situation. He looked. His body cried its complete inability to stand up, much less fight. He absently wondered why the Autobot's insignia was a bright, Decepticon purple.

Then he calmly, if shakily, raised his arms in surrender.

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><p><strong>[* * *]<strong>

**Footnotes**

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><p>(1)What was a group of Decepticon medics called, anyway? A group of Decepticons was a faction, so…what? Flock? Irritant? Dehabilitation? Threat?<p>

(2)The spacebridge involved lots of science, and lots of math. The 'mad' part came from the fight between Mixmaster and Wheeljack. Wheeljack had been trying to sabotage the spacebridge while the Skywarp's trine had been inside, defending the stack of energon cubes from the Autobot attack. Mixmaster had tried to intervene. Even Mixmaster's own teammates had joined the ripple of silent, still horror that spread through the pitched Autobot-Decepticon battle as the two crazy scientists faced off over a monumentally important and complicated piece of Cybertronian technology. _This_, everyone had thought no matter the faction, _will not end well._

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><p><strong>[* * * * *]<strong>

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><p><strong>AN: **I _will not_ be responding to reviews. Be warned of this if you choose to review! If you actually want to talk about something, contact me via the site.


	2. Pt 2

**Warning:** **Read this fic at your own risk.**  
><em>Dark!Fic<br>Size Kink  
>Medical(Mechanical) Gore<br>Body Fluids  
>InvoluntaryNonconsensual/Rape  
>Fear<br>Mind Games/Manipulation  
>BDSM<em>

Also, some bad science.

There is no Shattered Glass Metroplex or his minions, so I'm doing a lot of research and making it up as I go.

**Rating:** R

**Continuity: **G1 (Footnotes AU) / Shattered Glass

_It is not necessary to read the Footnotes series to understand this fic, but it is set in the same universe. Some of the world-building is involved._

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><p><strong>[* * * * *]<strong>

_From TFWiki –  
>joor = 6 hours<br>cycle = 1.25 hours  
>breem = 8.3 minutes<br>klik = 1.2 minutes_

**[* * * * *]**

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><p>Starscream had once debated theology with Shockwave.<p>

Not intentionally, but these things kind of…happened in war. Soldiers had these kinds of discussions. Even the least intellectual flyer speculated on a life underground, and footsoldiers had philosophical discussions about perspectives on life from the sky. Crammed together in overfull barracks and fortresses, under siege or just plain bored between training runs, the rank and file developed vast, glittering theories of warfare and civilian life alike. They verbally shredded commanding officers in both factions, reorganized Cybertron according to a grunt's priorities, and generally solved the universe's problems in the course of seventeen consecutive duty shifts. Getting shot at or preparing to shoot at other people was a mindset conducive to musings that would never cross the minds of normal mechs in peacetime.

Good officers ignored their soldiers' grandiose plans, knowing it was just hot air filling time between orders. Rarely did the big mouths lead to big actions. Really good officers averted their optics but kept their audios open, noting who talked the talk _and_ walked the walk. Those grunts got marked as subversive, or intelligent. Or both, in which case the Decepticons promoted them.

Who knows what the Autobots did with their intelligent, back-stabbing plotters. Common theory held that they were send to the front ranks to die (or switch sides, depending on how smart they really were). Another popular theory was that they were reprogrammed to kiss Optimus Prime's aft like a proper peace-loving, blindly-obedient recruit should. Everyone knew a meritocracy couldn't be tolerated by the faction that had supported, of all things, the Senate. If ability and motivation were recognized properly on Cybertron, the fragging civil war wouldn't have been necessary in the first place.

See how these discussions just _happened?_

Things happened in war that, theoretically, weren't proper. Grunts dissed their officers. Officers ignored impudence. Really good officers gave as good as they got, which might explain how some officers got rushed to the repair bay and some never made it that far. It wasn't standard operating procedure, but it happened.

Put one of Lord Megatron's generals into an overcrowded repair bay in Helios Base 4, damaged but not critical, and he'd get bypassed by the medics. That wasn't SOP in the Decepticon faction as a whole, but it was How Slag Gets Done Around Here in HB4. This general hadn't been one for demanding premium treatment, a private room, and a personal medic dancing attendance on him. Logic dictated that triage shunt him aside into one of the sidebays to be repaired after the emergency cases were taken care of, and Shockwave was a quieter, more reasonable mech than the other six generals. He knew better than to demand from Decepticon medics what Decepticon medics didn't have time or inclination to give. Repair attendants could be ordered around, and there had been several who did their sniveling, ingratiating best to numb and prep his melted feet for actual medical attention, but Decepticon medics were specialists. They could make a mech regret surviving the battlefield just by turning around and hefting a simple bolt-cutter.

Oh, yeah. That was all kinds of special.

One of things that got discussed at length among the grunts was the Unwritten Rules. The Unwritten Rules were those orders that were never actually given. They were entered into no duty logs, and no officer ever said them out loud. They were passed by word-of-mouth through the rank and file, and smart officers kept up with any changes that occurred from base to base, because the Unwritten Rules applied to _everyone_. Officers were just supposed to pretend that they were above them even as they obeyed them. Smart mechs survived to continue being smart mechs by obeying these rules. A good half of the Unwritten Rules circulating focused on repair bay etiquette(1).

So when Shockwave had ended up in a sidebay after the battle at HB4, made as comfortable as possible by the repair attendants but otherwise ignored for the time being, he'd settled in for the wait as per HB4's Unwritten Rules. At least he'd gotten a berth instead of the floor unlike the unfortunate three mechs sharing the sidebay with him. Even medics weren't entirely above Unwritten Rule #13: _Higher rank means getting the good stuff._ Two of the other mechs had been offline, showing similar melt damage on their feet from the Autobots' mobile gunnery unit in this battle. The third mech, however, had been a junior flight officer trying to distract himself from the pain. He'd soared through the outer fringes of the laserblast instead of taking a glancing hit like the other survivors. The heat had literally fused his wing armor into a solid mass.

Starscream had been laid out on his front, arms folded under his chin and jury-rigged supports propping his wings off the floor. He hadn't been able to see the general on the berth. He'd been facing away from the door. It'd been a particularly vulnerable position, but his paranoia hadn't been as fully developed yet. At that phase of the war, he'd just graduated from the War Academy and had been working his way up through the ranks with the total confidence, sheer ability, and disturbingly clever mind that would eventually earn him the rank of Air Commander. But that would be the future, and this was then.

Damaged and in severe pain, dealing with a rattled processor from the crash, Starscream had fallen back on old habits. Seekers had fiery natures, tempests of emotion contained in bodies designed for warfare. Starscream the scientist had spent a lifetime cultivating intellectual response over emotion. The first third of his time in the War Academy had been the most difficult, requiring the breakdown of millennia of study habits and the building of a whole new set of reactions. He'd coldly throttled any hint of leftover shame at how easy the new warrior habits had come to him. They erased a past life that he didn't want to remember any longer.

The balance of emotion to logic in aerial battles tended toward the quickest thinker, but flashes of intuition weren't guided by thought. Wing-level reflexes saved a Seeker's neck, buying time for the thought. It was why a good half of them were high-strung to the point of giggling, unhinged emotional surges. It was why a remaining third of them were armored more heavily, flew more slowly, and tended toward the other side of the spectrum: brooding thought instead of quicksilver emotion. It was why they flew in trines, finding external balance where their internal programming fell short. It was why Lord Megatron had an Air Commander, someone who could ride and read the faster-than-thought shifts among the air ranks and forge order from their chaos.

Starscream excelled at walking that tightrope between emotion and thought. He'd graduated at the top of the Academy because of a prenatural inclination toward thought over reaction, rare in high-strung flyers, but his emotional instability gave him a distinctive razorsharp edge in that combat-tumble of mood and change. His instructors had been fiercely proud. His classmates had been sullenly jealous. His wingmates feared him, and his superior officers watched his skyrocketing career closely. But nobody asked about what background had produced this spectacular flyer, or what loss had produced such a passionately hateful junior officer.

Unwritten Rule #3 centered on personal history: _Don't ask, don't tell._(2)

Injured and rattled, his firework emotions had sputtered down into white noise. Laid out helplessly like this, waiting for repairs, Starscream had returned as ever to past habits. He'd drawn inward, examining his own programming in an effort at self-repair and distraction. So close to his internal processor, more machine than autonomous being, he'd offhandedly rejected the overheated _spuh spuh_ of his thwarted emotional core. His personality component became less important than his system modules at this range.

Given time, Starscream reasoned himself out of panic and into thought. Past habits always surfaced.

One of the other mechs in the sidebay had woken shouting nonsense and calling on Primus for mercy as his melted body parts spewed sparks. A repair attendant had rushed in to immobilize him and knock him offline again, but Starscream had absently commented on Primus being unlikely to help someone so weak. The flyer's attention had been elsewhere. Shockwave had, however, been in enough pain himself to latch onto the provocative comment as a momentary diversion.

Shockwave, follower of logic and protocol, did not believe in Primus. He knew the history of the cult, though, and had pointed out the flaw in Starscream's comment: the priests of the main temple were great believers in the power of faith overcoming that of the body. The junior officer kicking his heels on the floor had stilled, unaware until then that anyone else was awake in the sidebay. He hadn't known who the speaker was. In truth, Starscream hadn't much cared. Too much thought was as painful as physical damage. Drawn back from his code-writing, still separated from his emotions by the nature of the topic, he'd paused just long enough to gather together his argument.

Then he'd attacked.

It had been a peculiar attack for a flyer, fought with words instead of weaponry. Shockwave had actually deigned to take notice and retaliate. Neither had had much initial interest in the topic, but even high-ranking soldiers were soldiers. Bored and pained, these discussions just _happened._ And among bored mechs, the longer the discussion about an inane topic lasted, the more complicated their reasoning and involvement became(3).

To Starscream, belief and history fell before science. If it couldn't be tested, it wasn't real. If Cybertron had a god in these turbulent times, it was obviously a being of great bodily strength. Spiritual power had no practical use on the battlefield. If he were to pray to anyone, it would be the proven aids of guns and missiles. All hail the many-armed Primus of warfare: Megatron and the Constructicon combiner and orbital artillery platforms. Primus could manifest in many forms, but all were armed and dangerous. Primus wasn't a frail invention of peace and all-encompassing love. That Primus didn't rush to aid warriors. Believers in that Primus fled and fluttered and _died_, and it wasn't the sacred death of a martyr. It was the stinking, screaming death of a useless idiot wandering onto a battlefield inadequately prepared for combat.

Shockwave had countered this idea of Primus with the Primus of the holy texts. He quoted the books preached by the cult, citing that believers claimed to find their strength within because all strength without could be taken away. What use a gun if overwhelming forces faced the one who held it? Primus gave his followers opportunities and openings, not precision-targeted strike teams.

Fate and destiny? Trusting in an omnipotent being because there was no individual will? _Please._ Starscream had snorted, flipping one hand in dismissal and loudly pushing aside the cult of recent history as weak, tithe-taking fools who had forgotten the lessons of Cybertron's past. If Primus had been a mystical being prone to passive-aggressively prodding his vapid followers, the violence of a slave revolution would have never happened. Miracles were how stupid mechs explained luck, and a well-thrown grenade did far more for the Decepticons than any follower crying out to his deity on the battlefield.

Shockwave had quoted a well-known priest whose primary message had been that Primus helped those who helped themselves. Starscream had said something pithy and acidic back about people who were famous for stating the blindingly obvious. Asking for divine aid was a trite piece of tradition, but practicing one's aim at the same time seemed self-evident. Religion made a nice garnish on top, but it was no substitute for actual effort. Praise Primus and pass the ammunition.

Curious faces had peered around the sidebay's doorway as ambulatory patients in the main repairbay overheard the junior officer's irritated tirade. More faces had gathered as Shockwave was recognized. The general's level head wasn't admired by the rank and file, but it was respected. The contrast between Starscream's passion and Shockwave's cool logic had been fascinating. The repair bay watched the debate, somewhat dumbfounded and, yes, bored spectators. Soldiers made - or found - their own fun. Injured soldiers took bets on who'd still be conscious afterward.

Shockwave had dispassionately pulled apart Starscream's arguments with the aid of history and past theological research. He had logic, the perspective of an administrator over a city-state, and the experience of a general. Starscream had social science, experimental hypothesis, and enthusiasm. Violence as a religion, Shockwave had reasoned, would be self-destructive at best; suicidal to the cult as a whole if not individually for its believers. Starscream had run off a litany of assassinations and alliances that brought citystates across Cybertron under Megatron's reign; where exactly was Primus' hand in that if not brute, threatened violence?

Which had, of course, introduced the topic of whether the cult was monotheist through history, or was it the conglomerate of past, multiple beliefs in different gods? Had the cult, as time passed, simple congealed all worship into a single god for convenience' sake? Shockwave had pointed out evidence of different citystates' cults holding to different origin stories for Cybertronians and Cybertron itself depending on the socio-economic level of each citystate's inhabitants. For example, the asteroid miners held to different mythology than the autocrats in the Iacon Towers. Different gods entirely, perhaps, instead of one cult throughout history.

Starscream had scoffed that current history illustrated the truth of the cult better: just the difference between the Autobots' version of Primus and the Decepticons' showed it to be a choice of faction and personal philosophy. Instead of an overarching god, therefore, the concept of a god became a highly individualized - or at least faction-oriented - fragment of personal perspective. There hadn't been multiple gods. The cult of individual citystates had a facet of the religion, and each 'bot in the cult carried a set of beliefs assigned the one designation: Primus.

The entire discussion remained somewhat hazy in Starscream's pain-addled mind, but what he remembered most clearly was shouting down Shockwave's calm assertion of the cult's fervent belief in calling on Primus' favor when under trying circumstances.

"Prayer? How is calling a **name** going to help you? **Prayer** won't save you when my rifle's at your head! If you want to pray to someone, pray to **me**. When I'm holding your life in my hands, **I** am your god! Calling on Primus won't stop me from killing you, but if you beg **me** for your life, I might at least make your death quick. When I say, _'For Primus' sake,'_ Primus is whomever has a targetlock on me, not the ineffable, fragging, feel-good, worthless god of rankless sparks who don't know the value of bowing to a higher power - the one **with power**, not a fictional being who may or may not exist!" There had been a repair attendant at his side, holding him down and saying something in a tiny, slightly awed voice that Starscream hadn't heard in his feverish indignation. "**Megatron** is Primus to the Decepticons! The Autobot loser with his foot on your neck is Primus for whatever Pit-damned eternity you have left before he shoots you, and you'll pray to that loser like a cultist at his most debased because it's who has the power to save or execute you that is a god!"

There had been a long, slow minute of consideration from the mech on the berth just out of his sight. The room had filled with the soft sounds of an interested audience, an ocean of ebbing and flowing murmurs from somewhere behind him, and the static-jumping white noise of riled emotion had scoured his thoughts raw. The repair attendant had held him down, and there had been a medic, too, doing something _click chck chck_ between shoulder and the burning slab that hung where his wings should have been.

Starscream had huffed hot air from his vents, gladly clinging to heightened emotion over the waves of searing pain. The other mech had only been debating from the perspective of history and theory, but Starscream always chose personal belief over others' reason. It had led what could have been a rational, if heated, theological discussion into the choppy storm of private thought. It had exposed far more of himself than he'd usually be comfortable revealing. He hadn't even _known_ this mech. But it had been a good distraction, which is what both of them had really wanted from the start. He'd barely even felt it when the medic uplinked into a port on his back and overrode his defense protocols to force him offline.

He'd found out later who the mech on the berth had been. His wingmates had taken a positively sadistic joy in informing him, in fact. The whole debate had been hideously embarrassing in hindsight, but Shockwave had been recovered and gone by the time Starscream had been brought back online. He couldn't even have claimed damage-induced amnesia, since half the base had had audio clips to replay at length if he tried. His choices had consisted of A: acting like nothing had happened, or B: hoping for a quick death in battle with some dignity left intact.

Starscream had invented and gone with option C: feeling no shame whatsoever.

That was a choice that would do him well through promotions to come.

It had helped that an entire subset of Unwritten Rules in Helios Base 4 had been created by the eavesdropping Decepticons listening to the debate from the main repairbay. Rule #116 had seemed to be, "_Footsoldiers should pray to the Primus-god-manifestation Starscream who rules the air above during battle, for he is of more use to footsoldiers than any imaginary-Primus-mystical being when there's an Autobot taking potshots in their direction."_ Starscream had been rather charmed by that.

Wingmates had fallen and been replaced, promotions had been awarded, the base commander had been shot, and still Starscream had shrieked like a weaponized wargod of rage through the skies above HB4. The footsoldiers had worshiped him even as they'd hated him. The flyers had openly loathed and closely followed him. In two stellar cycles, Starscream had ruthlessly torn his way through the base command structure like shrapnel through armor. A better comparison, as made by one of his unmourned wingmates, had been that of a meteor impact: causing collateral damage in passing but doing the most damage where he landed.

HB4 had hugged his contrails, tagging onto reflected glory like disciples following their savior as he'd risen to power. In that corner of the war, at that base, he'd been the Primus of close air support, a god of dogfights, and the Unwritten Rules had continued to be written about him. By the third stellar cycle, Helios Base 4 had grown to a fortress, and everyone had known that, no matter the base commander's name signed to base orders, Wing Commander Starscream had called the shots inside its walls.

Shockwave had never spoken of it again, not even after continued promotions had brought Starscream out of HB4 and into contact with the general again. Starscream had always sort of thought their debate had contributed to the personal interest Lord Megatron bestowed upon his career, however. Or perhaps Megatron had only known that when physical force created a minor god, the ruler of the pantheon had best keep the upstarts firmly in place. Starscream had admitted, after all, to refusing to bow to anything but superior military hardware.

The first time Megatron had transformed and hurled himself into the jet's palm, the Seeker god of HB4 had been humbled. The fusion cannon Megatron wielded outclassed him physically, and he knew it. He'd been promoted, then promoted again, and as Air Commander he had been part of his own theological logic. Shockwave was, perhaps, the only one of the Elite ranks who didn't mock him for his cowardice before Megatron's threats. The general had caught him in a moment of vulnerability, way back in Helios Base 4, and he…understood. He didn't agree, but as Starscream begged and wheedled at Megaton's feet, there was a kind of understanding in the general's distant, watchful regard.

The first time Starscream had defied the Supreme Commander, he'd gone to his knees with no shame to beg abjectly for his life. In his executioner he saw Primus, and he challenged that god's status constantly because his deity, like himself, was merely mortal. Starscream chose his own god, but in the end, he had faith only in himself. In the religion of war, the strong destroyed each other for the throne of heaven. At the ever-unstable altar of violence did Decepticons worship. As Shockwave has noted, it was a self-destructive practice.

Shaking with weakness, Starscream looked up into the face of an Autobot wider than the sky, and his hands rose in surrender. This 'bot, right here and right now, ruled the pantheon. He might not speak and create mountains, but he could crush the three Seekers like tin cans, and that was the very definition of Primus in Starscream's book.

He'd panic, but he was half-inside his own internal computer at the moment. Being overexposed to fear and his reeling body had blown him through the panicking stage and into actual thought. Give him a couple more kliks, and he'd pull out of his head and recover emotional equilibrium. In a distant way, he wasn't looking forward to that.

The massive blue visor band slowly descended. It stopped close enough that Starscream could see the optical lenses' bright circles of light behind the thick protective visor. What would normally be pinpricks of lights in a mech's optical configuration were as large as Starscream's entire head. They shifted and narrowed, projecting a blue tint onto the ground and the three Seekers cowering there. Something quivered behind Starscream's spark, and his thoughts cleared a little more. Skywarp's knees vibrated against his wings, the inner edges of the black-and-purple jet's feet clamping tightly into the crack where Starscream's hip joints met pelvic armor. His wingmate's systems fluxed wildly. From further back, throbbing low through Skywarp's higher frequency cycling, Starscream could feel Thundercracker's own joint-popping grip on fear falter. Their emotions dragged on his own body, pulling him out of his studied calm as they fell out of sync with each other: _puhchunk birr birr tunk_.

Terror fed on terror.

He dove through internal vertigo and forced open the encrypted wing channel. Oh, this wasn't going to feel good at all.

_*"Look down,"*_ he snapped through the channel, and his tanks surged. He'd already diagnosed half his coding errors, but internal commlinks had been low on his priority list. Now he regretted that as his own words echoed back in a nauseating stream of loud number lines through his glitching optics and audios. He heard color and saw sound. It was internal communication, but he curled in on himself as if physically assaulted. Skywarp mewled at his back, twisting. They both felt Thundercracker gag and hiccup again. Starscream called up eons of engrained grit and continued torturing them all with instructions: _*"Put your heads down, stay **quiet**, and stop panicking. I'll handle this. It's huge, but it's an Autobot. Autobots don't kill prisoners."*_ No matter how large and intimidating the Autobot.

_*"Autobot prisoners get medical attention,"*_ Thundercracked added, more than a bit hopeful.

Starscream could actually feel when the blue Seeker lost control and clutched at Skywarp's sides with frantic hands, overwhelmed by randomly sputtering conductors filling his torso and midsection with flares of electric heat. The air reeked of the burnt-copper stench from fried wires. Skywarp flinched and coughed, fighting back half-processed fuel. The spacebridge hadn't killed them outright, but panic redlined self-repairs in the worst possible way. Things were not looking good.

_*"Shut **up**!"*_ Starscream screeched furiously, and with an almost audible _shunk_ reality washed over him. His field of vision wobbled, colors suddenly glaring, and his systems thrust every ignored malfunction up into the front of his mind as if in revenge for being tuned out. His tanks registered as overfull and signaled an urgent need to release pressure before the gaskets burst. And he was looking up into the face of an Autobot that - that -

His hand shook hard enough that he had difficulty keeping them in the air. It wasn't weakness making him shake, now.

"Starscream…" Skywarp whispered between his wings, and an unpleasantly wet drip of liquid plopped down his back as his wingmate pushed out tremulous words. "I can't teleport. I can't balance my model projection equations. I can't even find my fragging activation sequence. **Do** something!"

Things were really bad if Skywarp was pleading for reassurance from _him_. Thundercracker wrapped an unstable arm under Skywarp's wings and gurgled, "Shhh," through a froth of coolant at his lips. Which was fortunate, because Starscream's version of soothing Skywarp probably would have left him knocked senseless.

Oh, Pit, none of this was distracting him from the Autobot still staring down at them. He'd been hoping for an army of more reasonably-sized Autobots to come around the insanely huge robot's leg to arrest them, or even a word said to clue him into what the giant _wanted_ him to do or say. Or divine intervention, but he had the sinking feeling that this was someone else's deity intervening, and not on Starscream's behalf.

Those gigantic optical lenses focused, bathing them in blue light. Skywarp and Thundercracker moaned softly and kept their heads down, but Starscream had to squint against the intense rush. His vision spun and settled as his optics chirped through reboot and filed rewritten code into place abruptly: _pop ting_. Power flushed and returned, and then he could see clearly.

That wasn't as good a repair priority as he'd thought it would be.

The blurred motion _over there_ turned out to be a hand, and the side of it settled on the ground in front of Starscream's feet light and quick as a bird coming to rest. The palm faced him. His legs drew up defensively - as if he could mount a defense against this? - before he even registered how _fast_ the movement had been. The Decepticon combiners Starscream knew had so much bulk that they traded agility for force. Their conjoined minds never quite had the integration with the gestalt body that a singular mech had. That this mech had.

This Autobot bent over them, perfectly balanced, and moved nothing like a gestalt. The other hand swept over, and Starscream's mind tracked its speed despite his terror. Sheer size made every movement look ponderous, but this monster wasn't slow. Air whistled over that arm, pushed through armor gaps like narrow canyons. Starscream could _fly_ through those crevasses, and flexing joints opened and closed them so quickly that wind whooshed loudly. The side of this hand set down gently enough to barely dent the soil right behind Thundercracker, and that was a spark-sinking level of precision. This was not a slow-minded, clumsy combiner team. This was a regular mech in an unbelievable body able to process even the tiny details of surface pressure.

The hands framed the trio of Seekers, palms inward, and their shivering bodies registered vast system resonance before their minds could fully comprehend the situation. It was so unreal Starscream couldn't immediately take it in. Pistons could be heard working behind red armor, smaller joints _chtick chtick_ing an underbeat to larger mechanisms' _TRM TRM_. It caused dust to ripple in layers above the heavier soil. The air literally jiggled around and through the three Seekers, visibly wavering to the rhythm of the enormous machinery behind the huge palms. They could feel the echo of the arm pistons, clanging through support structure and armor alike.

The rivets in the red armor before him were the fist-sized, meaning that the armor itself had to be as thick as a Seeker's forearm. The fingers alone were longer than Megatron was tall. Blast Off's shuttle mode could park on the palm. The Autobot's _hands_ were bigger than _all of them put together_.

Starscream shook hard enough that only Skywarp's grip kept him from falling over. Thundercracker's reassuring arm around Skywarp became a desperate seize, and he wasn't even looking up. Skywarp simply froze. He locked up between them as if paralyzed by what he felt. Starscream couldn't look away, but Skywarp and Thundercrack didn't dare look at all.

They were on Earth. Starscream's glitching sensor suite had taken an air composition analysis and spat out that conclusion to a .003% guarantee of accuracy. But with the Autobot's hands cupped around the Decepticons, the dirt world disappeared. This Autobot became their world.

Starscream quailed before the god of this world, their world, _his_ world. "We su-surrender," he got out, too frightened to care about the stammer his shaking caused.

The massive head tilted, a tiny motion overall and a cosmic-altering one up close, and bent closer. The blue visor blocked out the sky entirely. "Starscream," the Autobot said.

From a gestalt, the voice would have been pleasantly light. None of the Decepticon gestalts had apparently ever figured out the fine art of Not Shouting, so it was surprising to be addressed in less than a bellow. That didn't change the fact that a vocalizer in a Cybertronian this great had to be the size of Astrotrain. Combined with the regular empty chambers most mechs had in their necks and upper chests because of alternate modes - multiplied exponentially into extensive hollow spaces the size of entire rooms in this Autobot - and the voice emerged in a wing-rattling bass. At this range, gusting air sandblasted the hovering dust away hard enough to fleck paint off, and Starscream's name flooded through them in a tidal wave of sound.

Horrorstruck and reeling, Starscream could only imagine the destructive tsunami of noise a shout would be. This was bad enough.

Skywarp _screamed_, muffled but clear. From further back came rapid-fire hiccupped sobs of air and sound; Thundercracker's already-unstable systems had tripped into cascading failure, and his processor kickstarted everything in a frenzied attempt to save a whole body gone haywire. The fuel in Starscream's lines sloshed horribly into a foam, bubbles of exhaust back-charging from his thrusters and up into his engine, bumping rudely through his systems and into the energon processing tanks. Lubricant and coolant fluids whipped with air and leaked - no, _exploded_ - out of their containment reservoirs, spraying from loose gaskets and split hoses. Bursts of fizzing fluids coated his internal cabling and combined into a noxious, gelled form. His mouth filled, sour and rank, as his pressure gauges cued an emergency purge of his tanks. He retched.

It only added to the shimmering puddle of revolting vital fluids already seeping from the ends of his thrusters. Clumps of transparent gel floated in it, lubricant and coolant oozing from some breech in his armor. Skywarp coughed out his own contribution to the repulsive chemical mix down his back. Thundercracker's circuitry tripped, and he fell offline, then bolted online again with a jolt that stabbed their lasercores with a painful, electric start.

Their systems could not _deal_ with this right now!

Their tormentor repeated himself, and this time the trine fell like dominoes. Thundercracker flopped sideways, senseless, and Skywarp slipped down without his support. Starscream flailed with his arms and one leg but only succeeded in falling onto his back instead of falling face-first into the rejected fuel. But his flailing wasn't exactly controlled, and there was a _clang_ as his foot stubbed into something very hard. Something hollow, but too thick to echo, like slamming against the side of a well-built vault wall. He'd kicked something exceedingly solid, and his wingmates didn't sound like that(4). That left an option of one, and that option he did not like.

Dread glugged into his tanks as if to refuel him, but instead it spread through his fuel lines in dead, lead-lined weight. Starscream refreshed his optical feed over and over, cursing his spinning gyroscope in a hysterical rasp, and somehow it was worse to stare up from flat on his back into the Autobot's face. Don't ask him how. He hadn't been any less helpless sitting upright. It just was. Maybe it was the sudden sympathy he felt for those insects the humans pinned to boards, their soft wings helplessly splayed for display.

The face withdrew a little, creasing thoughtfully. Starscream hated himself and yet still felt a pathetic sense of gratitude for that thoughtfulness. "Starscream," the giant repeated from the small distance, and - finally - the overpowering rattle of sound parsed into a kind of intonation.

A question. One that would get repeated until it was answered, evidentially. "Yes," Starscream whispered.

The lights behind the visor _whirr_ed tinnily, the only hint that focus had shifted. "Others."

Skywarp had burrowed his helm into the soggy dirt, blindly - and stupidly, to be honest - trying to bury his audio receptors in a protective layer. His arms crossed his lower torso, hands clamped onto the bottom edges of his own wings. He was trying to still them. Their thinner plating vibrated in time with the huge mech's voice, and the whole rhythm pounded through his body. Thundercracker had limply curled into himself, ending up half-wrapped around Skywarp's head as each word jarred his processor insensible. Neither Seeker registered that the Autobot's attention had apparently turned to them.

As always, saving their afts was up to Starscream. It took cable-straining effort, but the Air Commander managed to raise one trembling arm to point. "Thunder…cracker. Skywarp." His arm fell. He couldn't have made it stay up even if he'd wanted to.

_Whiirr_ back to him. "Decepticon Air Commander."

State the obvious much? If he hadn't been so miserable and, well, terrified, Starscream might have snarked back at the giant. Sarcastic backbiting to cover fear was second nature at this point in his career. "Yes," he whispered instead.

_Whirrrrr_ to his wingmates. "Mayhem Suppression Squad."

What? "…what?" Was that an introduction or another question? Starscream had enough trouble thinking under the barrage of sound that he wasn't sure of the inflection. It certainly seemed like an appropriate name for the mech.

A slow, thoughtful _whirrrrrrr_ that left Starscream feeling like his every scratch was being cataloged. He stared, utterly cowed as that sky-spanning optic band focused in on him and him alone. The head descended, and Starscream shrank in himself. No, no, no. Not again! He went from shaking to braced for the worst.

The words came out softer than before, but it was still a sound bath that rattled Starscream against the ground. "Surrender."

His optical array claimed to have crossed sides, prompting a quick series of error-chases through his coding until they uncrossed. Oh, seriously. Why bother asking that question? Did they _look_ like they could put up a fight? Or, more likely, flee? Because really, what could three relatively-tiny Decepticon flyers do against an Autobot - an Autobot - what the slag could he possibly transform into, anyway? "Yes."

One imposingly large hand lifted, and a finger extended toward him. Starscream's own fingers spastically flexed, digging into the sodden dirt. The finger came to rest over his cockpit, covering him from chin to nosecone with just the tip. His legs bent, trying to get leverage to scramble away, but all that accomplished was forcing a heap of now-flammable filth up his thrusters. There was no force; just concrete, immobile weight. It was like pinning a butterfly with a railroad spike. He was abruptly glad that Thundercracker and Skywarp were too lost in their damages to see this, as witnessing their wingleader getting compacted under a single finger was something even he would spare them.

"We surrender!" he panted, feeling flexible air intakes close first under the pressure. "What do you want of us?"

The sound bath returned, bass rumble channeling directly through that fingertip into his chest: into lasercore, fuel pump, and spark chamber alike. Starscream spasmed under the intensity. "You are my prisoners."

"Yes!" he cried, error messages and malfunction warning lights blinding him. His neural circuitry thrummed in its slots, threatening to come loose, and his spark writhed.

"My prisoners," repeated close enough to jump his pump and send bubbles through his fuel lines again. Kinks cramped his shoulders with shocking pain, and Starscream knew he was missing something. Some emphasis lurked inside the voice, covered by pure volume and vibrato, but he couldn't _think_.

"Yes," he whimpered. Through the static he could hear Thundercracker and Skywarp moaning faintly in renewed pain. "Your prisoners. Please. Primus, stop!"

A long pause stretched out, oddly self-satisfied, and then the finger pushed. A tiny, almost imperceptible pressure for a mech the size of a mountain, but armor plates buckled like tinfoil. Starscream's howl diminished to a wheeze, and the Air Commander's compressed lasercore _fitz_ed. "Mine," sighed over him, a gale-force wind that pushed him over the edge and offline at last.

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**Footnotes**

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><p>(1)These were the kind of Unwritten Rules that had drill sergeants smacking recruits around until they got it right, because everyone preferred the newbies die in battle instead of on base. That was just bad for morale. See, the drill sergeants patiently explained (read: waved fists threateningly to make sure the dumb recruits paid attention <em>Are you <strong>listening<strong>, rustbreath?_), Lord Megatron had once had ten general-allies. At least one of them had entered a repair bay unconscious but alive, and he hadn't come out again. Rumor had it that Megatron had wanted that troublesome general out of the picture, but nobody was stupid enough to gamble that the cause of death had been under orders. Posthumous orders, perhaps, but Lord Megatron made a habit of keeping the medics on his side. _Yeah, I meant that to happen!_ orders were what wise commanders gave to look like they were in control instead of running scared from the tyranny of medical personnel.

(2)Unwritten Rule #15: _Rumors have more power than the truth._ Gossip was just more fun.

(3)Unwritten Rule #314: The _other bases have better energon than us._ It didn't matter if you'd just been transferred _from another base_; do not argue with the quartermaster about the quality of rations, for his conspiracy theory has had eons to develop. He is fully capable of calling up witnesses on energon taste and grading, drawing diagrams on whatever's handy, and using vocabulary caustic enough to verbally flay alive a veteran drill sergeant.

(4)He should know. He had too much experience doing it. Both of them were made with lighter alloys and thinner plating, so the sounds were higher-pitched overall. Plus, Skywarp always protested and Thundercracker kicked back.

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><p><strong>AN: **I _will not_ be responding to reviews. Be warned of this if you choose to review! If you actually want to talk about something, contact me via the site.


	3. Pt 3

**Warning:** **Read this fic at your own risk.**  
><em>Dark!Fic<br>Size Kink  
>Medical(Mechanical) Gore<br>Body Fluids  
>InvoluntaryNonconsensual/Rape  
>Fear<br>Mind Games/Manipulation  
>BDSM<em>

Also, some bad science.

There is no Shattered Glass Metroplex or his minions, so I'm doing a lot of research and making it up as I go.

**Rating:** R

**Continuity: **G1 (Footnotes AU) / Shattered Glass

_It is not necessary to read the Footnotes series to understand this fic, but it is set in the same universe. Some of the world-building is involved._

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_From TFWiki –  
>joor = 6 hours<br>cycle = 1.25 hours  
>breem = 8.3 minutes<br>klik = 1.2 minutes_

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><p>Time passed in a rather worrying manner. Well, that is, it would have been worrying if he'd been paying attention. As it was, he had the bleary impression that he was better off not doing that. Things in that direction seemed quite painful, so he wandered off another direction doing his best to ignore said pain. Consciousness didn't so much as leave as go check a few social networking sites, play some ridiculous yet oddly addictive points game forwarded by someone unimportant, chase down the lyrics to a song that everyone on base had been humming all orn, and then look up and realize that <em>Oh my, is that the time? Where has the day gone?<em>

In Thundercracker's case, his systems rudely reminded him of a prior appointment with reality that he was late for. While holo-vid dramas like _As The War Turns_ or _All My Battalions_ played up the hazy period immediately after repairs, the reality was that time-lapse errors like that only happened when internal time parameters in individual components got knocked out of sync. Thundercracker's essential systems powered up easily. They rebooted in quick sequence, forcing his wandering mind back to dealing with his body. He catapulted from stand-by to battle-ready flawlessly. His optics lit, but only searing, bright white light registered. He tensed in perfect recollection of dire peril -

- which didn't help him one iota, as his arms were pinned tightly over his head and his legs were stretched out to their limits. There seemed to be very heavy weight resting over his thrusters. There were individual fingers denting his wrists. Thundercracker's fierce scowl covered a flinch as those fingers dug in further, demonstrating far too much strength for comfort. It apparently hadn't escaped notice that he was back in the land of the fully aware. His flight engines tried spin up and generate a threatening, deep bass growl only to pop up a score of imposed circuit-blocks on his HUD. Against the white light and motionless black silhouettes standing like statues over him, the error alerts glowed an annoyingly implacable red.

**Access denied.**

Thundercracker tried a run-around only to pop up more **Access denied.** messages. His scowl deepened; someone had hacked his internal command codes. His watchdog program was up and running, telling him that his actual data firewall hadn't been attacked. Simple physical connections had been compromised between his body and mind. The relays, outside the heavy layers of protection covering his central processor units, had been rendered inaccessible by changing their command codes.

Not unexpected if he'd been taken prisoner, although most of the time the Autobots settled for clamping the fuel lines to his thrusters instead of invading his onboard computer. Autobots were squeamish that way. Fuel clamps were easier to remove than changed codes, although both were effective if the prisoner was closely watched. No worries there, as his guard seemed to be holding him down. He couldn't recall ever being restrained hands-on like this before, but his repairs must have required the removal of statis cuffs.

Repairs, from the lengthy list of damage logs checked off his autorepair queue, had been quite necessary. There was still a medical override blinking in his HUD, in fact, with a foreign programming 'taste' that let him know it was an invasive codebreaker commonly used for repairing prisoners in either faction. His watchdog program would have had a fit if it were anything more, but something about the 'flavor' of this override seemed…off to him. He dismissed the feeling; his cockpit had been retracted to allow his chest to open, which explained any and all unease he felt at the moment. It wasn't a particularly comfortable thing - _Hey world, wanna look at all these vital systems?_ - but he didn't fight it. Even if he could oust the medical override, that just meant whoever was repairing him might start employing more persuasive methods of opening him up(1).

Thundercracker intentionally relaxed. While being a prisoner wasn't going to be any fun, he'd take a boring cell over full-body failure and mountain-sized Autobots. The hands on his wrists were very strong, but they were a normal mech's hands. That was more reassuring than he wanted to admit. His optics flared and dimmed against the overly bright light, trying to identify the vague figures looming over him. There seemed to be two by his head. Huh. More than one mech holding his wrists, then. It seemed the Autobots weren't stupid enough to underestimate injured Decepticons. What had they restrained his legs with? He couldn't make the details out, but it looked like they'd just stuck his feet into a…wall? Odd, but effective. He tugged experimentally but couldn't even unlock a knee joint.

The hands on his wrists gave identical half-twists against the joints in clear warning, and the jet relaxed again before something dislocated. "Alright, point made," he muttered, and the pressure on his wrists eased. Not that he seriously thought _Autobots_ would dislocate his wrists for half-heartedly struggling, but it never hurt to pretend that he was intimidated by pain.

Like he would get far with his chest opened up this way, anyway. What, did they think he was suicidal?

A sparklingly happy voice approached, the cheery tone preceding the dark silhouette that appeared to one side. Thundercracker wistfully thought of Long Haul's crankiness in comparison, but then what was actually being said penetrated the sheer enthusiasm of that voice.

" - course I'm not saying that wings aren't useful, but c'mon! Helicopters can fly backwards. Backwards! Not to mention the whole hovering thing, which you must admit is a grand flight ability for anyone, but for a jet? It'd be novel. It'd be fantastic. It'd require twelve rotors and a can opener, and we'd be in business." A distinctly greedy hand came down to grab the nearest wing and trace a perfect circle. "Right here, one there," the mech knelt down to lean over Thundercracker, completely careless of the open armor panels his elbow knocked into, to thump the opposite wing, "and maybe one near the tail end for added lift. Although he'd probably need it closer to the nosecone. Heavy fragger, ain'tcha? All that extra armor to deal with your sonic modifications, and your thrusters are just that much more powerful to give all that armor lift. But a few rotors, and you'd have that lift problem taken care of!"

The voice was friendly, and the tilt of the silhouette suggested that the mech genuinely thought Thundercracker was listening with interest to his proposition. Thundercracker, in actuality, had frozen up in dawning horror as he realized what - and _who_ - the overly-enthusiastic mech was chattering on about. "Maybe plant it square in the cockpit? It's not like you need it to transport humans, and a rotary system is nearly as hard to crack open as armor-grade glass. You'd lose the sound cushioning from the seats, but you wouldn't have an open cavity to cause the problem vibrations in the first place. More protection overall, I say."

He seemed to catch on to Thundercracker's horror. Perhaps the slight sag to the jet's jaw clued him in. The cheery tone took on a bit of dismissive reassurance. "Oh, don't look at me like that. The can opener's just for aesthetics."

The light hadn't dimmed any, but Thundercracker's overworked optics were calibrating to adjust. White light was a conglomeration of the color spectrum, and under the assault his optics had to pick out what specific colors were flat shadows against the wash of light. Until they did that, the mechs above him were just shapes. This shape, however, he thought he recognized. Maybe? Fingers prodded his wing, and he numbly registered a chattered comment about modifying his flaps to adapt to a rotary assemble.

Against all prevailing logic, it could be Ratchet. The Autobot Chief Medical Officer Ratchet. It was all too crazy to be real, but those fingers were attached to a crazy mech.

Decepticons knew crazy mechs(2). Crazy mechs weren't necessarily something to be afraid of. It was the hidden crazies that had to be feared, because nobody ever knew which way to start running when the mask slipped off to show the danger underneath. However, abruptly finding out that this mech had hidden his craziness this well, _insanely_ well, sent panic bubbling into Thundercracker's tanks. Tone down the brightness, up the contrast, and meddle with the color balance to bring out something in the shadows…

Sudden, shocking fear jolted vague recollection into almost-certainty. "Get your hands off me!" Thundercracker barked, thrashing against his guards as an aileron got tweaked to the point of pain. "Cut it out!"

"Cut it out? I'd prefer to yank it, honestly." The Autobot medic merely grinned an undeniably manic grin at his struggles and continued his running commentary. "There's something infinitely more satisfying about the pull, the twist against armor, and then that exquisite moment where the wires and cables are all that's holding you together." The aileron suffered another tweak.

Thundercracker grated a scream through a grimace of pain as the Autobot thugs muscling his arms down went through with their silent threat and indifferently dislocated his wrists. They slammed his hands into the ground at an angle, grinding dirt into the joints and stretching him upward as the wall at his feet - pulled him down? Was that possible? But his knee joints were threatening to go next, and his wrists were burning lumps of sodium-flare agony pulsing up and down his arms. He was pinned, unable to thrash even enough to twitch. His fans kicked into high gear. On his wings, every flap and slat fanned through their extensions as if their movement would somehow free him. It was an involuntary reaction, one he clamped down on the moment he regained control from the pain.

"Did you feel it?" the medic questioned eagerly, releasing the poor bit of wing in order to bend over him, hands settling flat on Thundercracker's spoilers. Not to restrain him, no. This was a curious scientist with a brand new, shiny specimen. "The pop of cabling extending past the point of build tolerance?" Overexcited optics stared straight into his own, busily observing reactions, tracking the pained flinch across the more flexible metal of Thundercracker's face. "The sparking as wires snapped? What's the sensor count on your wrist joints? How does it compare to, say, here?" One hand left his spoiler. The jet had a panic-stricken moment to realize he preferred knowing where the crazy mech's hands were, even if that place was on his precious wings, before a shrill, white-hot drip of pain touched inside his open chest.

"Aaa**auggh!**"

"Interesting." Another head tilt accompanied an _atunk_ impact that vibrated through the jet's entire torso and consumed Thundercracker's higher thought processes. Self-preservation seized all available power and rerouted it for emergency. Systems faltered.

"Resume," droned over Thundercracker's strangled cry. The medic glanced up at the two Autobots over his head, and Thundercracker panted air through his mouth to fight the heat-flush brought on by his secondary pumps stalling out. His primary fuel pump bleated urgent warnings at him, but the coolant pumps had reacted more strongly to the callous knock on his lasercore.

"What is **wrong** with you?" he shouted the second his temperature dropped back from redlining. "You're a medic, for Primus' sake!"

The medic nodded, a pleased smile replacing the psychotic grin. He turned to retrieve what looked like a set of clamps and, still smiling, reached into Thundercracker's chest again. "Yes! Yes, I am. How kind of you to notice! They usually don't," he confided in the other Autobots. "Decepticons have such strange definitions of what constitutes medical personnel. What do you think about the rotary idea?"

"Focus, please." A three-fold drone, the Seeker realized. "I will take your suggestion under consideration, but at this time I find the current configuration preferable." As Thundercracker's optics flitted from mech to mech, he finally picked out the details on the wall at his feet. It was another Autobot, this one bigger than Astrotrain. He didn't recognize him, although there was something odd about the mech. Besides the fact that he spoke in eerie unison with the two mechs holding Thundercracker's arms and, oh, wasn't protesting _blatant prisoner abuse!_

He reached for calm. Okay, so the Autobot Chief Medical Officer was a closet lunatic. That might actually explain why the other Decepticon flyers had returned from Cybertron after the, er, 'Sand Mission' with a healthy dose of respectful fear for him(3). An unsettling thing to uncover about a high-ranking medic, of all mechs, but, crazy was crazy. Decepticons knew how to deal with crazy. If anyone ever bothered to officially write it down, the soldiers could practically write a guidebook.

Rule #1: _Be calm, cool, and collected. Do not provoke the crazy with excitement_.

Thundercracker forced his voice level despite the unnerving sensation of hands picking through his internals. "What are you doing?"

"Mmm?" Why was the medic painted green and white? And _red_ optics? That was bizarre. Thundercracker had assumed it was his optics messing with the color balance at first, but nothing re-adjusted as he stared at the mech. The medic barely glanced at him in turn, all that manic energy focused with frightening intensity on his work. That kind of quicksilver shift in focus gave no pretense at sanity. It didn't help that the medic started draping disconnected tubing over the chevron on his head, apparently just to keep them out of the way. Seeing bits of himself on display like that made the jet feel a little queasy. Or maybe that was the hands rearranging his internals. "Oh, something or other, you know how it is when a friend asks a favor. You don't really ask what, you just agree to do it!" A beaming smile flashed at the other Autobots. "You mind if I do a thermite reaction on his main engine? The humans do this thing with car engine blocks, and his armor's just thick enough that it'll last long enough for the - "

"Focus, please."

"'Focus, please,'" the medic mimicked in a nasal tone, although the three-voice drone was mostly baritone. "That's how it always is with you, buddy. 'Focus, please. Focus, please.' Why can't you ever say, 'Yes, of course, Ratchet! Make life less boring for the rest of us!'? It'd be a great explosion, I promise, and he'd probably survive. I could rebuild him! Maybe not the way he looks now, but who needs all that extra mass?"

"Since when do Autobots treat prison - **urggle.**"

Something in his lower torso came loose with a horribly squishing sensation, and Thundercracker's righteously angry reply to the crazy medic turned into a nauseated groan. Everything behind where his nosecone rested abruptly felt _empty_. Parts of him that he usually never really felt but knew were there just...weren't anymore.

His optics offlined automatically as his entire fuel system went into a spinning tizzy. Tanks that had been registering as low - no surprise, as he'd gone through at least three emergency pressure purges - were now re-registering as either low or inaccessible. His repair queue dropped its timeline and scrambled into another order. That was confusing enough, but the order confused him further. According to his self-repair and fuel system, the majority of his fuel processing plant had just disappeared, tanks and all.

Fuel plants refined raw energon into the level grades needed to actually supply the variety of mechanisms that made up a Cybertronian. In Thundercracker's case, he had twelve main tanks to handle dispersal to his root and alternate modes. Now he was down to two tanks: the final repository tank for fully refined energon of the highest grade, meant to be fed directly to his lasercore and spark integration mechanisms, and the comparatively tiny tank all the Earth-bound Decepticons had just in case they had to intake human fuels.

That particular tank had advanced refinery equipment hooked into it that Thundercracker's main tanks lacked, as the processing plant was meant to handle raw energon instead of crude oil. Human fuels required a lot more processing time and power to be acceptable to Cybertronian systems, but no internal refinery had the capacity to convert something like, say, petroleum into an acceptable grade for Thundercracker's lasercore. His thrusters didn't even function well on the stuff, and the Constructicons complained for days if any of the Decepticons consumed human fuels, even for emergency refuels. It clogged everything with carbon grime that was a pain in the aft to clean out, apparently.

That tank was also the one that took the longest amount of time to finish processing. Which, being that he suddenly had no fuel tanks left to supply anything other than his most essential life support, gave him a survival timer on rapid count-down.

Thundercracker lit his optics again with the hollow, horrid certainty that he had no energy to fly or power his weapons. Even if he somehow escaped and raided a human gas station in the next 4.6 breems, his systems were running _down_. There wasn't enough power to keep the refining process in his tank going long enough to convert gasoline to a low grade energon. He'd fall into emergency statis lock, conserving what little fuel remained to keep his lasercore powered and spark contained.

Ratchet still had his hands inside Thundercracker's opened chest, but now an entire array of tubing, slotted together in a honeycomb artery structure and still sluggishly dripping fuel, had been slung over his shoulder like a bandolier. It looked like and probably was the main fuel dispersal lines that fed in and out of Thundercracker's processing plant. This wasn't a hack code-change like what had been done on his relay circuits. This was surgery, physical and irreversible.

If it could be called that instead of outright murder.

Energon drizzled to the ground. The heavy _plop plip_ sound of fuel hitting dirt was unmistakable. It wasn't from the fuel tubes, and Thundercracker couldn't raise himself up to see where it leaked from. It had to be coming from him, but he couldn't _see_ it!

This was ludicrous. This was insane. This 'surgeon' smiled charmingly at his victim as he picked carefully through exposed internal systems, then callously ripped out a handful of live wires. They sparked electricity dangerously near the smears of energon dripping down his front. Thundercracker grunted against the tearing pain, and the psychopathic Chief Medical Officer smiled wider. The uneven lengths of wire were rolled about Ratchet's palm by his thumb, tangling and winding about each other, before joining the bits of tubing already draped over his chevron.

A circuit board was torn out next, and Ratchet studied it disdainfully. "Meh." It went flying over one shoulder. The ground under Thundercracker rumbled, sending dust blooming up into the air around them. The medic glanced up into the overwhelmingly bright light. "Almost done! Closing up my patients is always the time-consuming part. They always seem to wake up about now, and struggling is not conducive to a quick recovery period. I keep telling them to relax and rest, but they insist on trying to get away."

The smile widened to the point where charm switched to creepily unhinged, and, yes indeed, Thundercracker was in fact doing his best to struggle. He wasn't getting anything but more pain out of the attempt as his dislocated wrist joints grated and his knees threatened to give way next. His vocalizer spat quiet _gleep_s of sound as it reset again and again against the jet's firm lockdown order. He would not - could not - scream again.

Rule #2: _Don't give the crazy a reaction. Crazies get crazier if their crazy gets a reaction_.

Ratchet didn't seem to care that his prisoner-patient had ceased reacting vocally. He filled in the silence himself. "I admit, I sometimes take my time closing up on Decepticons. They have such funny concepts of what I'm allowed to do, if you know what I mean. This one's a little less persistent than most, but there's at least usually one accusation of being medically fraudulent, with some begging for mercy further on." Things clinked and clanked as the green Autobot worked inside Thundercracker's chest, and the manic smile dropped into something thoughtful. On Ratchet, the look terrified many. Thundercracker was only beginning to realize that truth. "One cute bitlet of a Cassetticon tried appealing to the Kaon Physician Code of Ethics. When I told him I never took the Medical Board's blasted examinations - I found them far too restrictive, so all hail Lord Prime for obliterating the fraggers - he pleaded for pity from my inborn sense of moral standards." The uncomfortable shifting in Thundercracker's guts halted for a moment as Ratchet paused, red optics staring into the distance. "Imagine that."

The medic shrugged his shoulders, spilling another glug of energon down his windshield from Thundercracker's removed tubing, and his happy grin returned as he bent back to work. "I think I rebuilt him into a cup holder for Jazz's dashboard. Cassetticons are so small, it's hard to really give them a decent upgrade. Now, someone like this fellow," one hand, now coated pink with energon, came up to fondly pat Thundercracker's restrained arm, "gives me something to work with. You sure you won't think about the rotors? He'd look good. Unique. It's not you don't have the other two as a matched set, after all."

Skywarp and Starscream. The Autobots had Skywarp and Starscream. _This_ Autobot had his wingmates, and this Autobot was a psychopath. The rest of the Autobots had apparently gone insane as well. Thundercracker's wriggling took on a more urgent edge, self-preservation now in control. Rescue wasn't coming. His vocalizer whined stress under rapid-fire conflicting orders: to yell in anger, pain, and panic, and to stay completely silent.

The unnaturally still Autobots at Thundercracker's feet and hands tilted their heads in eerie unison. "We are a matched set. I did not want a matched set."

As if things weren't confusing enough, that flat statement mixed up things worse. _We_ and _I_? The whole Pit-spaced Autobot army had lost their minds!

Ratchet lifted a pink-dripping hand to salute apologetically upward. "Yeah, sorry about that, buddy. Sometimes I get carried away. It was a great upgrade, and I hadn't had a patient to try it on yet, and...you know how carried away I can get. But look how it worked out!" He gestured at the three Autobots in turn. "Tell me they're not more useful like this! I mean, with their personalities before, you'd have been constantly disciplining them. That's why Lord Prime sent them to me, after all. Aren't they better like this?" He looked so proud it sent a skitter of fear racing through the jet's remaining internal systems.

Something must have shown despite how he fought to keep his face blank, because Ratchet beamed down at him next. "I wouldn't need to touch his head at all. Okay, I'd have to uplink some circuitry into his root mode to set the command controls for a rotary system, but I wouldn't touch his personality kernels. I promise!" Another bipolar switch from manic to solemn made Thundercracker yank harder on his dislocated wrists, hoping desperately to pop the cables and slip his arms, if not his hands, from the Autobots' hold. "Unless...you know, I could tweak his hardwire directly. A little hacking there, a little rewiring there, a wireless transmitter in just the right place, and I could slave his body over to your control without changing his personality any. Think about it, big guy." Ratchet leaned closer and tapped a finger against Thundercracker's fear-wide optics. The finger pressed down dangerously hard when the jet tried to jerk his head away. "Another set of drones, except they'd still be trapped inside." _Tap tap_ against toughened glass, and Thundercracker's overworked optical sensor fragmented his vision into kaleidoscope colors as pressure bore down on it. "Trapped wild minds inside tame drone bodies. I wonder how long it'd take before the minds broke?"

"An experiment for another day," the three-fold drone interrupted Ratchet's musing, and the medic straightened. "These are my prisoners, not Prime's. I will decide what will become of them."

"Lord Prime," Ratchet corrected softly, but he was already absorbed in his work again. "Big or small, that'll catch up to you one day, my friend."

The words were heard but passed Thundercracker by. He'd stuck on something more important. He craned his neck, looking up with new optics at the two Autobots holding him down. No, not Autobots. Drones. Now that he knew to think about it, the odd unison of motion and voices made a mad kind of sense. Take the body and reprogram it, and remove the mind inside...

He shuddered, the prickling pain stabbing through his sensors suddenly far less a threat than Ratchet's crazed inspiration. Trapped inside his own body? His body a...drone?

The green Autobot's insane rambling abruptly made much more sense. Held helpless under his power, Decepticons would beg. Under this pretense of a medic's hands, faced with that kind of torture, anyone would beg. Stubborn as he was, Thundercracker had to actively fight a survival subroutine that pinged his vocalizer, trying to bring it online. Against all evidence, the most base level of his programming had decided that the only way to stay alive was to grovel like Starscream before Megatron's fusion cannon. Thundercracker's higher functions fought that urge, because he had - laughably perhaps, or probably - hope.

Three breems until statis, but a smidgen of hope remained. He had no fuel, no way to get new fuel, no way to _process_ new fuel, but he wasn't Ratchet's prisoner. Victim, yes, but the drones - he understood the _I/we_ glitch now - had stated that he wasn't Optimus Prime's prisoner. That implied that he wasn't the Chief Medical Officer's then, either.

_"A friend asks a favor,"_ Ratchet had said. A friend of the thoroughly-insane Autobots? Or a personal friend?

A friend with three drones. Drones that didn't act like they'd been preprogrammed. Programmed drones were easy to spot as every movement was robotic instead of natural. So it was likely that these drones were being directly controlled by someone, and all at once instead of individually. That much control challenged even experienced drone-masters. From the way they spoke, Thundercracker was willing to bet that Ratchet's friend was using them as direct interfaces, wearing their bodies like masks. That took an immense amount of processor space. He couldn't even speculate on the amount of space demanded from a controller using three drones at once.

He really, really didn't want to imagine his body in their place.

Thundercracker had a suspicion, a fear, and it coiled inside his chest. It pressed into the back above his wings as the Autobot CMO pulled his cockpit out of retraction and slammed it shut with a satisfied smack of one fluid-covered hand. The other hand slithered around Thundercracker's neck and pinched under the back of his helm, and the medical override icon suddenly switched off. The _snickt_ of the medic's program chip withdrawing was a relief, but the feeling of violation lingered. The jet winced and kept his teeth gritted together against the squeak of his vocalizer trying to initialize. 2.6 breems and counting, and he had no way to change that. All he could do was wait.

"That's that," Ratchet said cheerfully, sitting back on his heels and dusting his hands off. Splatters of pink flicked off in every direction. A few flecks spattered Thundercracker's face, and the medic leaned over to use his thumb to clean one such fleck off his check. "I've gotta hand it to you: they are a fine set to collect. You ever feel like having me in your debt again, I'll take the whole trine for a day or two." He leered, and the jet didn't even try to avoid his hand when it slid down to finger the edge of an air intake. Wide, alarmed optics watched, powerless and knowing it. "A few medical overrides, and their command codes'll get 'em to do what **I** say." Merry red optics, parodies of the Decepticon optics Thundercracker knew and was used to, squinted up at the corners in a dirty smirk. The hand on the jet's intake lifted to wag one finger mockingly. "Doctor's orders."

With that, the green Autobot heaved up to his feet. A quick stretch slopped the last of the fuel from the jury-rigged bandolier he still wore, and then he strode away, to all appearances forgetting the prisoner he'd just finished mauling. Thundercracker stared after him for a moment, but his optics snapped upward as the unbearably brilliant light - shifted.

He barely noticed when the drones released him. All of his attention centered on the source of the light. The dronemaster with processor space to spare. The psychotic, crazed Ratchet's friend. He'd had a suspicion, a whisper of hope, and the Autobot looming larger than the sky above him both confirmed and crushed them.

2.5 breems, and he'd never wished more that he'd been wrong.

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**Footnotes**

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><p>(1)Like, say, a crowbar. The Constructicons had dogpiled Soundwave the last time his tape dockets got damaged, as the Communications Officer was notorious about not letting anyone but a Cassetticon behind the door on his chest. There had been an epic war of leverage waged. Scavenger, Long Haul, and Bonecrusher had heaved away at one end of the crowbar, and Soundwave, pinned down but still struggling, had fought a losing battle to keep his cassette desk closed on the other end. Like all wars, the results hadn't been pretty. Lesson learned: don't make the repair mechs open you up the hard way.<p>

(2)They had to, because about an eighth of the ranks had altered programming of some form or another. Some of it was self-modification for various reasons, a lot of it was base program overwriting done for loyalty or behavior control, and about 75% of it went wrong under pressure. That didn't even count the large percentage of the ranks with personality defects that could be classified under _Mental problems: these mechs are royally glitched, sir_. Normal people were a pursuit of blind Iacon Tower-trash; Decepticons usually settled for identifying the worst of the crazies, or at least knowing what would set them off.

(3)They'd dubbed him _'Run Away!'_ for reasons none of them would explain to him. That had not, much to Thundercracker's bemusement, stopped the Coneheads from developing a battlefield crush on the apparently scary Autobot. Personally, Thundercracker just couldn't see it. Everyone knew repairmechs were good in the berth and medics were the best, but he seriously didn't get how one little groundpounder had cowed half a dozen flyers into fearing - and lusting after - his power.

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><p><strong>AN: **I u_will not/u_ be responding to reviews. Be warned of this if you choose to review! If you actually want to talk about something, contact me via the site.


	4. Pt 4

**Warning:** **Read this fic at your own risk.**  
><em>Dark!Fic<br>Size Kink  
>Medical(Mechanical) Gore<br>Body Fluids  
>InvoluntaryNonconsensual/Rape  
>Fear<br>Mind Games/Manipulation  
>BDSM<em>

Also, some bad science.

There is no Shattered Glass Metroplex or his minions, so I'm doing a lot of research and making it up as I go.

**Rating:** NC-17

**Continuity: **G1 (_Footnotes_ AU) / Shattered Glass

_It is not necessary to read the _Footnotes_ series to understand this fic, but it is set in the same universe. Some of the world-building is involved._

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><p><strong>[* * * * *]<strong>

_From TFWiki –  
>joor = 6 hours<br>cycle = 1.25 hours  
>breem = 8.3 minutes<br>klik = 1.2 minutes_

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><p>The drones had only released him. They didn't step back. "Stand up," they said, and Thundercracker shot a wary look at the largest of them. Now that the floodlight focused on them had shifted away, he could see more of the drone. It sported a purple Autobot insignia and the characteristically blank look he recognized from seeing drone soldiers before.<p>

He'd seen large drone soldiers before, including a battle platform mech, but he'd never seen a drone soldier like this. Its altmode seemed to be a conglomeration of...guns? He could see at least three distinct barrels from his position, and that definitely looked like an ammunition feed on the nearest leg. If that were true, the drone would be a walking artillery battery composed of very, very large guns.

He reflexively started to scan the other two drones as well before checking himself. They were unimportant. It didn't abate the feeling of being surrounded by the enemy, but knowing that these three mechs weren't independent, sentient Autobots was a spot of comfort in this nightmare. He didn't have to worry about one or the other acting out while he was distracted. They were all, essentially, one mech.

That one mech was worrying enough.

_Don't look up._ Denial: not just a river on Earth(1).

He sat up slowly, using his injured wrists as an excuse. He pulled them close to his now-closed chest, cradling them as if they hurt worse than they really did. It _was_ more difficult to get up without the use of his hands, but he had no desire to hurry.

Not that he was given a choice, of course. The two drones at his back seized his wings and pulled upward.

"Hey!" Thundercracker thrashed, firing futile orders at his thrusters to engage. **Access denied.** "Put me down! Get your Primus-smelted hands off me before I tear them off!"

They mechanically raised him, robots with no pain reactions when he gave up trying to ignite his thrusters and just kicked his feet at the nearest vulnerable parts. That turned to scraping at the ground in a bid for leverage when they continued to pull him up and out of contact with the dirt. When they had him raised above their heads, the smaller drone's arms fully extended and Thundercracker's feet unable to touch the ground at all, he kicked back and managed to wedge his feet against the darker drone's blocky helm and the pale one's wide underarm. His wings ached in protest, straining against their implacable hands, but he pushed as hard as he could.

"Let - me - **go**." Thundercracker hissed out through the effort as metal groaned on the verge of bending. Their arms shifted a bit to compensate for the angle of his push, but they otherwise didn't acknowledge the angry jet they held. "Has the whole galaxy gone mad? I demand to speak with an officer!"

He tried not to think that his words were nothing but hot air, evaporating into nothing as soon as they were said aloud. The entire situation seemed distorted through a funhouse mirror, warping everything normal around him into scarily strange shapes he didn't recognize. He clung to what he knew, a talisman of knowledge he wasn't sure still applied in this skewed looking-glass world.

Autobot prisoners had rights(2). Didn't they?

"Prime has no jurisdiction here. My prisoner." The voice shook the world, and Thundercracker's whole body stiffened into a rigid arch as his head whipped up. The massive Autobot towering over the small group of drones and prisoner didn't move, but he didn't need to. His voice was threat enough. "An interesting request you make. Treatment would likely worsen after appeal. Your file has no note of suicidal or stupid inclinations. Why."

It took the Decepticon a long moment to adjust to the sheer volume and understand that the last word had actually been a question. Newly repaired, Thundercracker wasn't incapacitated by the all-encompassing sound-bath this time. The area behind his optics felt somewhat blurry as things oscillated, circuit boards vibrating in their slots, but his entire body had been reinforced for sonic warfare. He had stress tolerances that topped normal Seeker tolerances. The voice jittered his fluids and upped his pressure gauges, but that was nothing like the cascade failure he'd suffered previously.

It did remind him that he was in no position to struggle. "I wasn't aware that Autobots indiscriminately executed prisoners, much less without a trial." It took more self-control than he'd admit to, but he dropped his feet off the drones' bodies. He hung from the hands holding him up, arms crossed loosely across his chest. It was a very thin pretense of relaxation. "Since I'm practically offline already, what's the harm in speaking with a higher authority?"

Although saying that Optimus Prime had no jurisdiction here was odd. The monstrous Autobot's entire speech was odd, really. Why would speaking with an officer _worsen_ his treatment? Thundercracker couldn't picture any way his situation could get worse.

A bass rumble it took him a moment to decipher as an amused chuckle brought a few images to mind, none of them pleasant. "Much more harm than many thought possible could come of it. If you were not aware of this, then now you are."

A dreadful hint of a thought trickled into the back of his mind. Everything from the botched spacebridge trip to Ratchet's sinister leer ticked into a disturbingly logical line that Thundercracker was genuinely afraid to step over. Pragmatic as the other Decepticon thought him to be, the blue Seeker practiced denial as diligently as the next mech. It didn't make _sense_, but he had the claustrophobic, clipped-wing sense that it was the only conclusion to be reached. He just didn't want to follow the chain of thought required to reach it.

The two drones putting finger-dents in his wings hoisted him just a bit higher. It was a distraction from the revelation barreling in like an oncoming train, and Thundercracker gratefully took it. "Careful, greaseblotch! I'm not a toy!" he snapped, not deigning to uncross his arms or thrash this time. He wouldn't surrender what little dignity he had left.

That bass rumble rattled his armor again, and he shot a narrow-opticked glare at the largest drone as it stepped closer. It was easier to direct his anger at reasonable-sized mechs, even if they were drones. "That's right, Autobot, manhandling me is hilarious. Let me down again, and I'll show you how funny I can be." Not that he'd waste precious time or energy trying to fight the trio of drones, but some part of him still searched for an escape route.

"You are amusing," the dust-raising voice boomed, sounding distantly entertained by his defiance.

The largest drone reached out and grabbed Thundercracker's right arm. The jet uncrossed his arms in one quick movement that both smacked the drone's hand aside and got his arms into a more defensive position. Not, er, that he could do much with his hands limply dangling from dislocated wrist joints. "Don't you dare," he warned, low and furious. Ratchet's rather inappropriate fondling of his face and intakes still seethed at the forefront of his thoughts. This was neither the time nor the place to pick a fight with his captor, but Thundercracker wasn't about to let himself be molested - or '_repaired_' further, for that matter.

The drone's head tilted, observing his behavior instead of truly curious of the cause, which made Thundercracker feel humiliatingly like a specimen under the scope. It reached forward again. This time it wouldn't let the Decepticon evade it. Without the use of his hands, Thundercracker was unable to do more than slam his free forearm against the drone's hands. Again, the lack of pain-reaction meant the drone didn't even look up. Instead, it zeroed in on his wrist joint. One large hand engulfed his lower arm, holding him still, and the other hand singled out Thundercracker's middle two fingers. The delicacy required to hold his comparatively small fingers pinched between its much larger thumb and forefinger would have been comical if it had been any fingers but his involved.

The drone pulled.

"Scr**ap** iron and **met**al." The jet's face screwed up, teeth bared and lips drawn back, as cables creaked. Something popped as the drone forcibly pulled Thundercracker's hand socket out, realigning the ball joint. There was a scraping _clickrik_ when the drone eased off. The overstretched cables clinked as the joins loosely came back together, but fuel lines, neural links, and sensor relays unkinked and snapped back into place as socket and ball met properly once more.

Numbness dissolved into pings as restored functions tested themselves. A rush of sensation shot up Thundercracker's arm like a mixed bag of shrapnel-pain and confetti-relief.

He couldn't stop the shocked gasp of air as his fans stuttered. No longer struggling, he hung limp and stared at his hand in the drone's larger palm as the drone carefully manipulated the fingers and wrist as though measuring range of motion. The edge of every movement twinged with pain, but the relief of being able to flex his fingers again made up for that.

Damage on the linkages kicked his repair system into play. Thundercracker's relief dropped into a deepening well of fear as his repair queue boosted its demands and subsequently drew on already-low energy levels. His remaining time recalculated from 2.4 breems to 2.15 breems. Just over 17 minutes until statis lock, if not permanent deactivation. The Decepticon raised his optics from the dispassionate drone to the motionless mountain of a mech above them all. Statis or deactivation depended entirely on the Autobot who had apparently ordered Ratchet's hacksaw-style surgery.

The drone dropped his right arm and went for his left this time. Thundercracker let him, bracing himself for the pain but more interested in the massive Autobot. "What's this about, if **yo**ur no-aah-ot," the joint slotting back into place made him pause to hiss instead of yelping aloud. When his voice steadied, he continued, "Going to kill me?" Siccing Ratchet on him, then repairing his wrists didn't make sense unless -

- no, none of it made sense, but Thundercracker intentionally blocked the logic puzzle assembling in the back of his thoughts -

- the giant wanted to keep him alive longer than the 1.89 breems. The repair queue had updated again.

With no warning, the two drones dropped him. He stumbled, intentionally pitching forward for distance from them only to stop short as the gun-drone's large hand enveloped his head. The palm blocked his vision entirely but for glimpse of the ground straight down, and the fingers wrapped up and over until the tips went underneath the back of his helm. As far as prisoner restraints went, this was a scarily effectively method. The mech was big enough to separate head from body by pulling in two different directions: _pop_.

Just imagining it was enough to stop his half-aft escape attempt before it began. "...is this necessary?" he asked against the drone's wrist.

"Is it." The booming words still didn't sound like a question, but Thundercracker had been a prisoner guard more than once. Setting rules was important. Were restraints required? Depended on whether the prisoner was going to behave or not. Most Autobots weren't foolish enough to believe a Decepticon who agreed to their rules. Thundercracker could _use_ that.

If, of course, his tanks weren't so low that escape was a laughable attempt at salvaging a more impressive death than deactivation under statis lock. Death in an escape attempt had a better sound to it. Except that it was still death.

"No," Thundercracker said quietly, ceding a battle that never got off the ground. "I'm your prisoner."

An odd buzzing hum shook dust and armor alike, crawling across his sensor grid the way Soundwave's bids to get Thundercracker into his berth did. Although this was far more pervasive than Soundwave's queer version of getting his attention, and a brilliant trill of feeling scrolled up Thundercracker's back in a way that never happened around Soundwave.

The Decepticon communication officer knew how to manipulate Thundercracker's tolerance to intense sound. The Seeker had tolerance to some of the more damaging frequencies because his reinforced design structure centered around his sonic boom weaponry. It translated to an odd kind of affinity to less dangerous sonics than those generated by his own flight engine. Soundwave apparently found that attractive in a berthmate, and because of the Constructicons' expansive mental health policies(3), he'd fixated on Thundercracker. Also Breakdown, with whom he'd had more luck. Thundercracker...hadn't reacted as well to Soundwave's less-than-subtle offers.

The zing of the right sonics through tuned sensors reduced most sound-oriented mechs to mewling and pawing at their partners. Thundercracker had resistances to outside pressure that Soundwave had initially underestimated, however. Instead of becoming putty in the Decepticon officer's hands, his battle computer had interpreted the first surprising pulse of sensation as an attack. The Seeker's reaction had been proportionately violent to the perceived 'attack.'

Soundwave made future offers only after making sure Thundercracker knew what was going on. The initial unfavorable impression lasted, though, leading Thundercracker to avoid Soundwave whenever possible. Which had, in turn, lent itself to a regrettable (read: annoying, because Decepticons were nothing if not persistent) reputation of being hard-to-get.

It wasn't that Thundercracker didn't like the attention. The sensation was incredible. Being the sudden object of pursuit was flattering, if unnerving. But personal preference played a large part in physical attraction for anyone, and most chasers took the completely wrong approach.

The buzzing hum that Soundwave used fooled wing sensors into the simulation of stunt flying, thrusters into spinning up, and weapons into priming to be fired. Mind followed body: his battle computer flipped over into full sync with onboard systems. His optics switched on combat overlay, scrolling tactical moves and targeting locks across his field of vision and patching in radar and lidar until everything around him came into sharp relief. Everything ran at maximum power and at the highest combat readiness, until even a tree leaf falling demanded utmost attention because it _could_ be lethal and therefore needed to be analyzed with threat assessment, repair protocols, and plain old thought.

While other war-builds handled it differently, Seeker builds were specifically tweaked to make the transition quickly. The Decepticons' first line of defense and attack, their best and most dominating force on the field, was their aerial fleet. The flyers had to be ready to combat-scramble at any moment, and their bodies had to be able to follow the intuition that guided faster-than-thought maneuvers. There was a reason Starscream became so irately high-strung around Megatron, and it wasn't just because their basic personalities wrestled like Los Luchadores during Mexican TV primetime(4). The Air Commander position stood on the right hand of the Supreme Commander as Second-in-Command - and also partly as a bodyguard. Starscream entered combat-ready status the moment he came into a certain proximity to Megatron. Within Earth's close confines, he never had the distance required to leave that proximity. The closer and longer they were forced together, the more agitated Starscream became as his systems forced hyper-awareness.

Mechs weren't meant to stay at that level of battle-alert. Decepticon in everyday life, in program-deep relaxation _Standby mode_, felt the touch of someone's hand in a totally different way than a Decepticon in full-on system readied _Situation alert: combat program boot Priority 1_. The humans called it being '_hot and bothered._' The phrase was appropriately apt. Systems running hot and mech definitely bothered, one way or another. Given that level of system readiness, the Decepticon in question had two options: fight or interface.

Or Thundercracker's choice when faced with Soundwave: flee and deal with it himself. Decking a superior officer - more than once, anyway - would land him in the brig, which would leave him far too conveniently cornered. If Soundwave got it in his head to go after him while restrained, things could get ugly.

Thundercracker liked the stimulation. Who wouldn't? Well-handled harmonics buzzed his turbines like nothing else. But his personal preferences separated interfacing and fighting. He didn't like associating combat and intimacy. He preferred the slower, more thorough method that required time, knowledge of and concentration on his partner.

Besides, Soundwave? Not exactly on the short list of mechs he wanted to be in the same room with, much less be close enough to in order to take on a berth (or against a wall, floor, console, or what/whomever struck his fancy and stayed still long enough). A telepath who might report stray thoughts to Megatron did _not_ appeal to Thundercracker.

Not to mention that while Skywarp liked anyone who could transport him from Point A to Point B without effort on his part, Thundercracker had a tricky sense of attraction. There had been the Seekers from his first wing with their whirlwind flying techniques, all flashing wings and skydancing; the grounder with the huge suspension springs that bounced so nicely, and, oh, that wild paint job he'd flaunted; the tiny, clever fingers on that hacker-spy, what had his name been...yeah, the multiple joints that turned every which way until Thundercracker hadn't known where they'd tap next. Watching him work at breaking computer codes had been a spark-teasing exercise in gradual arousal until they were both off shift and ready to -

"Aaahh," Thundercracker sighed faintly as the hum tapered off. In its wake, half-remembered memories and purring internal systems rippled through him until he shifted from foot to foot uncomfortably. Stymied combat readiness backfired, forced by helplessness into an internal ricochet. Individual command codes clicked quickly, trying to light his thrusters one at a time, kick on his weapons' status, acquire target lock, _anything_.

**Access denied. Access denied. Access denied.**

_'Access denied' my engine block. **Ratchet** denied. How about I deny him a head when I get my hands on him?_ Thundercracker stilled as the hand on his own head flexed. His sour thoughts continued. _His mind's gone already. Frag, he'd probably enjoy it. I'll tell him it'll be 'interesting.'_

He hadn't meant to shudder when that thought crossed his mind, but the idea of Ratchet finding anything interesting made his onboard computer flip through the command code checklist reflexively.

**Access denied. Access denied. Access denied.**

_No, really? I hadn't noticed. Try telling me something useful. _**Command order: find a way out of this_._**

**Command not understood.**

_Then I'm glad I'm not the only one confused._

"My prisoner," poured through him, a metal conductor in a sound bath, and Thundercracker's aborted shuffling started again. He really did not want that sound to continue. Personal preference aside, _being a prisoner_ aside, it was doing things to him that his body liked. The pervasive sound of the giant Autobot's voice wasn't damaging him, but that particular tone had a strange effect on him. His systems hummed, matching the buzzing, almost tactile tone caressing him. Everything in Thundercracker primed, ready to go. _Fight or interface._

He was beginning to understand why Starscream attacked Megatron so often on Earth, treachery pushed into action by inescapable system alerts. Fleeing wasn't really an option when trapped.

He could almost feel his captor's...satisfaction? Anticipation? Possessiveness?

Yeah, possessive like a mech with a shiny new toy. Or a predator with tasty prey. Snack-sized little treat, ready to be eaten right up.

"What do you want?" he asked against the drone's wrist, because he didn't want to betray what exactly that voice had done to him - and he didn't have time to wait for mind games. 1.7 breems and counting down.

The gun-drone let him go as abruptly as he'd captured him. Thumb and forefinger pinched on either side of the jet's head and used it to turn him. Thundercracker stomped on a surge of irritation at being treated like, well, a drone. Then he just stared.

There was a hand on the ground, palm up. A hand that seemed larger than the entire docking tower lift back on the _Victory_. "Come here," the large, no, huge, no, immense, no, ginormous - no, wait, that sounded like something Skywarp would say - ah frag it, the beyond-adjectives-big Autobot commanded.

Staring narrowed to glaring. His knees bent casually, and his hands, mostly functional now, curled into fists as he slid into the least obvious combat stance he knew. "You must be joking. I'm not a pet to come when called," Thundercracker sneered. His optics flickered, trying to keep tabs on all three drones. His survival subroutines could stuff it. They were insistently urging him to do as he was told in the face of _that_. He was outnumbered and too low on fuel to manage much of a fight, but he wasn't going down without one.

The drones would attack, he'd lose, but he'd _make_ them force him to submit. He had his pride, after all -

**SLAM.**

"Yes. You are."

Thundercracker coughed his intakes clear, stunned. "W-what..?"

What had...just happened? He'd been standing, perfectly balanced to lunge at the smallest drone, and now he was flat on his back. His neck felt stressed, as if the drone hadn't let go of his helm easily. His audios rang high and strained in the aftermath _biiiiiiing_, his optics fritzed a clearing field of white static, and his aft and backs of his wings felt like he'd skidded on them over rough ground. There was dust and grit pattering down on him from above.

Something had _thrown_ him backward. Damage assessment came up with minor scrapes on his back, but no frontal damage. If the drones had hit him, there would be far more dents in his armor, but sensors playback indicated - a storm front? Not quite. He recognized that pattern from Earth weather, specifically wind from tornados, but there was cross-correlation with explosives that his mind wouldn't stop reeling enough to link.

Thundercracker sat up slowly, shaking his head to settle his rattled processor. Arrays glitched and automatically rebooted. His vision cleared, and things wrenched in a gut-level twist as he understood.

The hand that had been palm-up was now palm-down. As Thundercracker gaped, it unhurriedly turned back over. There was a crater where the hand had slammed over. Clods of earth were still raining down. The whole area had been scoured clear of ground cover, including a few trees that lay on their sides, snapped clean in half.

Air pressure. No drones, nobody striking him. He'd been hurled back like a piece of paper before a hurricane. Judging by the grooves in the dirt, not even counting how far he'd traveled before he hit the ground, he'd been thrown back at least 30 meters by air pressure alone.

The hand curled closed and opened again. "**Here.**"

Subroutines shattered shocked paralysis, getting the jump on conscious thought. Thundercracker scrambled to his feet and _ran_. He didn't know where, he didn't care, he just had to get away, away, _away!_ Blind terror soared, temporary energy that wouldn't last, but he used it because the only other choice was to stay.

**SLAM.**

...or there was no choice.

Gibbering fear was not a good feeling. He was helpless before its rush, however. The only fact he could cling to as it eroded his higher thought processes was that he hadn't been truly hurt. 1.59 breems from statis lock, smarting from minor scrapes gained by being pitched into the ground and awkwardly tumbled across the ground face-first this time, yes...but not hurt.

If the Autobot wanted him dead, there were easier ways to do it.

Thundercracker pushed himself back onto his turbine casings with arms that trembled. To be fair, the rest of him was shaking, too. He looked his hands, sand-chipped and quivering. They gave him no answer to his current predicament.

He looked up reluctantly.

The other hand, massive and menacing, had made its own crater in front of him.

When he turned his head, still hunched over in a defensive half-cringe, he could see the trio of drones watching him. Above them, the blue visor watched, too. All of them, so impassive and so calm. Just...watching.

Thundercracker had never been this intimidated in all his long life. Not by an Autobot, not by a Decepticon, not even by staring down the business end of Megatron's fusion cannon. Death came in many forms. Fear haunted all of them. This one plugged fear into the main speakers and amped it up, Soundwave-style. Terror bypassed battle computers and conscious thought to yank survival right into the forefront of his mind. This time, he fought the subroutines, freezing up motor functions long enough to figure out what he'd done wrong.

His optics stuck for a terribly long moment on the watchers, but eventually he forced himself to look to where the first hand waited. It lay still open, with a patience he had absolutely no desire to test. _"Here,"_ the Autobot had commanded. _Come when you're called like a good pet._

He couldn't even summon up enough of his smashed pride to feel humiliated by that thought. A little dizzy, more than a little submissive, he crawled a couple dozen meters before his legs agreed to bear his weight again. His systems were in complete upset. Between that and the crushing fear (or fear of crushing), he stumbled more than he walked. When he tripped and fell, he crawled again until he managed to wobble back to his feet.

He never took his optics off his goal. Get to the hand. Obey.

Or else.

Thoughts hovered, distantly bothering him with things he really, truly couldn't handle right now. Fear insulated his mind against actual thinking, instead letting him obsess over tiny details. Like how even the tree stumps were gone now. The second hand had come from higher, hit with far more force, and air pressure had _blasted_ anything not made of armor-grade metal or glass to nothing. There were fragments of wood stuck like oversized splinters in a few of his joints, grinding to a problematic mass of sharp pieces that would probably manage to lacerate a few hoses before he got them back out. If he lived long enough to get them back out.

He was walking far too fast. The hand looked even larger from up close, and Thundercracker's joints were losing pressure as if his hydraulics had already sprung a major splinter-leak. His wings shook independent of the rest of his body as panic subroutines seized enough control to try escape flight cues; all his flaps, slats, and spoilers uncontrollably went through their extensions. It was disorienting trying to walk at the same time, and it staggered him enough to finally knock him off balance completely. When he went down this time, he stayed on his knees and just numbly stared at the hand far too near.

Where were his wingmates? He needed them. He needed Skywarp's teleportation. He needed the black-and-purple flyer's incurable optimism against all odds and his never-ending store of wisecracks. He needed the incredible intuitive leaps Skywarp pulled out of thin air, whipping them out of the worst corners they'd been backed into. He needed Starscream's keen intelligence, forgotten science background surfacing to focus on the empty, draining space where there had been fuel tanks. He needed his wingleader's fierce defiance against anything that would ground them, and his shrieking hate for anything that succeeded. He needed Starscream to pull them together as a wing, because on his own, Thundercracker had only his thoughts and his weapons and the engines to roar into the sky above.

His weapons were inaccessible. The engines wouldn't even turn over without the proper command codes - which he, of course, didn't have. The open air mocked him. No weapons, no flight, and no way to _think_ his fragging way out of the situation.

1.31 breems until statis lock, and Thundercracker couldn't manage to stand up. Although the trembling had tapered off as rattled processors checked off program priorities and strangled the panic-reflex survival subroutines that had almost gotten him pancaked. That didn't abate the shaky feeling of _Do or Die!_ that left him kneeling on hard dirt, helplessly looking at that gigantic hand. He really did not want to and had no choice but to take even a single step closer toward it. What could the Autobot _want_ with him?

"Do you require assistance?"

The normal volume, if triple-voiced, question caused Thundercracker to flinch violently, arms flung up to shield his head before he registered who had spoken. It took him a frantic second more to understand what had been said. He lowered his arms and tried to glance in the drones' direction, but he couldn't get his optics to look away from the hand before him. It waited.

Did he want assistance? Oh, no. He'd rather get smelted in a slow-burn furnace.

Did he need assistance?

The hand - the Autobot attached to it, but he couldn't think about that, wouldn't think about that - waited. The question that his mind fixated on was _But for how long?_

"Yes," he whispered, but it came out as the shrill _gleep!_ of a malfunctioning vocalizer. He coughed, clearing out the grime clogging his intakes, reset his vocalizer, and tried again. "Yes."

Nothing happened. No sound of footsteps from the drones, no acknowledgment of any kind. Thundercracker couldn't look away in order to look askance. In the corner of his vision ticked the countdown. There was fear, and then there was _fear._ Both were present here and now.

Scraps of pride were buried. The words still stuck in his throat like an actual object had become lodged inside. "Yes, I require assistance." Stung, he tacked on a quiet, "Please," because nobody had made him do it and therefore he could.

Heavy footsteps approached. Measured cadence, no pretense at grace, not a hint of personality every Cybertronian's stride conveyed: confidence, boredom, efficiency, anger. He didn't even have to know they were drones to hear it in how they walked. If they were online, Skywarp and Starscream would hear it, too. It wasn't much information to work on, but he wished them more luck with the drones - and master - than he currently suffered.

Ungentle hands lifted him like a doll. To his vague surprise, they only lifted him to his feet this time. That was surprisingly reassuring. His crumbly, crisped pride still preferred to walk to his death over being dragged. If he was going to be killed, a fate against which he had only wisps of hope to hold onto.

So they walked forward, Thundercracker's desperate subroutines flashing multiple and varied signals as they went. None of them were good. Red error alerts blended together in a constant stream over the Autobot of yellow-green and purple towering over him, like a nightmare of the repairbay seen through the optics of a small Cassetticon. A Devastator composed of Autobot Constructicons and bloated absurdly out of scale by sheer, circuit-shorting terror. **Danger: low fuel. Warning: statis lock imminent. Proximity alert. Proximity alert. Proximity alert.** Over and over again, the command code list ran up against the circuit blocks: **Access denied. Access denied. Access denied.**

Thundercracker's internal temperature rocketed into redline as his fans stalled out. His mouth fell open, panting for cooling air as his optics widened and widened and couldn't widen further. The drones were holding him up by his arms and wings by now. Red messages smeared now, but they wouldn't stay still. They jumped across his field of vision in unpredictable zigzags. He didn't realize he'd begun shaking so hard his optics were moving, not the words.

**Danger: low fuel. Danger: temperature control error. Warning: statis lock imminent. Proximity alert.**

**Access denied. Access denied.**

**Danger: low fuel. Danger: temperature control error. Warning: statis lock imminent. Proximity alert. Access denied.**

**Danger low fuel Danger temperature control error Warning statis lock imminent Proximity alert Access denied Proximity alert Access denied Proximity alert Access denied.**

**ProximityAccess alertdeniederror WarningDangerDanger lowfuelstatislock immimentimminentstatis Danger**

**ProximityAccess WarningWarning**

**WarningWarningerrorWarning**

**DangerDanger**

**Proximity**

**Denied.**

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><p><strong>[* * *]<strong>

**Footnotes**

**[* * *]**

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><p>(1) Although even Soundwave had been unable to locate that particular river on any human map, despite its evident popularity. Patrol assignments were all tagged with low-priority search orders for it. Due to how often the humans referred to it, Soundwave had earmarked the possibility that control of the frequently-visited landmark would lead to concessions from world leaders.<p>

(2)Decepticon prisoners had rights, too. The Decepticons set guards on their prisoners as much to protect them as keep them imprisoned. Autobots liked to sneer at that, but it was true. Just because Megatron had tossed aside the inane Iacon Convention's 'Rules of Engagement' didn't mean he sanctioned over-the-top prisoner abuse. Rules for war actions were created by idiots who refused to apply reality to war. If rules applied to warfare, it'd be fought on gameboards instead of battlefields.

(3)Hooks's recipe for uncontrollable infighting: strand a bunch of Elite Decepticons on a grimy organic planet. Stress them all with constant contact with each other and a prolonged fight for dominance and survival on a hostile world. Give a very limited set of options for living quarters, battlegrounds, companions, subordinates/superior officers - and then confine them in an underwater ship. The Constructicons had weighed the pros and cons of dealing with the situation and added their own ingredient to the potentially explosive recipe. Roughly translated: _If you like it, go for it. Just pass it by us first in case we have to fix the mess later. Or in case we want to participate._

(4)Watching 'humans in disguise' wrestling had become half the Earth-bound Decepticons' guilty pleasure. The first time had been accidental. The second time had been boredom. By the third time, it'd been too late to stop watching. There was just something so patently ridiculous about the show that led to addiction. Runabout and Runamuck had only been dissuaded from wearing their custom-made luchadore masks into actual battle when Megatron caught them putting the things on. Unconfirmed rumor had it that envy, not disgust, caused the warlord to burn the masks to ash and threaten dire consequences for anyone else so stupid.

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><p><strong>[* * * * *]<strong>

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><p><strong>AN: **I _will not _be responding to reviews. Be warned of this if you choose to review! If you actually want to talk about something, contact me via the site.


	5. Interlude: A

**Warning:** **Read this fic at your own risk.**

_It is not necessary to read the _Footnotes_ series to understand this fic, but it is set in the same universe. Some of the world-building is involved._

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><p><strong>[* * * * *]<strong>

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><p><em>From TFWiki –<br>joor = 6 hours  
>cycle = 1.25 hours<br>breem = 8.3 minutes  
>klik = 1.2 minutes<em>

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><p><strong>[* * * * *]<strong>

**Interlude: A**

**[* * * * *]**

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><p>Is someone watching? Has the commotion drawn an observer? Look, as if just coming upon the scene. What does a bird's eye see?<p>

Not the larger picture. That's an overwhelming sight, and there's a tendency to focus on the small, moving bits of in a landscape. The forest is too big at first, but there are individual trees to zoom in on. The moving pieces snap into focus as group of four, moving at a slow march across ground thick with settling dust. The area is flat, but not in the way barren wastes are. This is a flat sterility like scoured surfaces are flat: all the excess bits stripped away until only the bare structure remains. These four walk on the exposed bones of Earth, metal feet treading across rock and packed dirt.

Look at the two Autobots in the lead. Strange, aren't they? Except for the purple insignia leering from their chests, they are almost complete opposites.

At first glance, it makes no sense to pair them together. The darker Autobot on the right is the shorter one, and his head draws level with his companion's shoulders. The wheels on his legs indicate that his altmode is a car of some kind. An odd car for Earth, however, as a careful counter notes an extra set of wheels lining his legs. His arms are actually weapons: heavy, but beautifully matched electro-blaster guns. Maybe that makes him akin to the large Autobot marching at the rear, a mech apparently made entirely of guns, but sheer size difference makes that a puzzle all its own. He's an Autobot decked out for war, but still odd when compared to his companions.

Regardless, he is working with the the taller, bulkier Autobot on the left. They are partners here and now, and this is a confusing partnership to an outside observer. Let the bird's eye circle and stare: watching them, puzzling over them, trying to understand.

The other Autobot is paler, but color alone doesn't set them apart. An experienced optic picks out the signs of a more militant altmode than the first Autobot. The second Autobot transforms into something with treads and thick armor. A tank, perhaps. The large gun barrel slung over his back is certainly a clue in that direction, anyway, and the discrepancies between them only widen from there. What might puzzle a first glance of the optic are oddly-placed linkages and reversible joints visible on the second Autobot's root mode that just don't fit in with a vehicle form. Cybertronian designs can be quite complex to accommodate shifting mass and size, but rarely do they include elements of architecture. Yet this mech has armor plating occasionally gaping open to show a glimpse of what could be a console slot here, an observation portal there—closed, of course.

It doesn't make sense on first observation, but any triple-changer would understand immediately. The redundancy and bulk that make triple-changers so dangerous on the battlefield come from every piece of armor and each join serving multiple purposes. It also makes them somewhat more vulnerable, as interior surfaces don't always have enough room for their own reinforcements. For all their toughness, triple-changers in their rootmodes are more vigorous in defense than offense to protect the exposed parts of their multiple altmodes. It's this kind of weakness that a sniper looks for, that Decepticon and Autobot alike scan a mech for. A casual observer might not notice on the first pass, but confusion attracts a second look.

If the point is disguise, pairing a civilian vehicle with a triple-changer seems counterproductive. A car, even a strange car with six wheels, might pass human inspection. A triple-changer tank…well, it isn't likely a human would just walk by that. The sensible solution would be to send the car out on his own. The biggest of the three Autobots is an odd one, but surely a mech made of weaponry would work better with another military Autobot. Size is not such an issue between the two larger mechs, not when their altmode functions are so much more compatible. Hide the triple-changer with the third mech and let the car go out on his own. There would be much less attention drawn by breaking up the strange pair, and surely different assignments would suit these two better. How can they possibly work well together when their strengths are so clearly out of proportion to each other? Look at them as they support the Decepticon jet between them. The paler Autobot has to stoop, while the dark Autobot lifts his arms to meet his partner halfway. This is not a job for two disproportionate mechs.

Why are they paired, then? It doesn't make sense. It defies logic, and if there is an observer watching, he must be swooping about for another look in a search for the missing link. Why are these two Autobots working together: large and small, dark and light, civilian and military, disguise and open threat, alien lifeform and native disguise? What is the common denominator?

The Decepticon held between them doesn't unite them in any way. He is obviously a flyer, grounded against his will, and he even more obviously doesn't want to be there. A Decepticon, yes, but even at first glance a casual observer can detect that he is the prisoner. He is the vulnerable one. He is larger than the darker Autobot on his right, roughly the same size as the paler one to his left, but they are supporting him. They hold his arms, and only their hands hold him upright. If they would let go, he'd fall. From the way his thrusters scrape at the clear-blasted ground, he would likely scramble backward.

Strange, very strange. Or is it? What's missing from the picture? Go in further, study more intensely this group of four. Now the observer doesn't just note in passing who; there is a need to know _why_.

This closer, second glance might bring their faces into focus, and the lack of understanding continues to grate uneasily on the nerves. Or rather, the sense of disconnect between actual events and an observer's theories grows wider. Something is wrong, here, and even a disinterested observer takes that second look. A Decepticon and three Autobots is a common sight on a battlefield. It can be even odds depending on who's in the group. In this situation, it's a perfectly reasonable number for a prisoner detail.

However, the terror painting the Decepticon's face is not reasonable. The Autobots might be expected to have expressions of satisfaction, if scaring their prisoner is the goal, or concern if they are worried about his reaction. Their mask-like lack of expression is unexpected. They have no reaction at all to his fear. Their faces are turned to him, observing him as the observer watches them, but there is absolutely nothing there. For all that their facial features differ - broad and narrow, light and dark, optics and visor - they look identical.

It's the uniting factor. They bring the Decepticon forward in unnatural unison, bodies so different but moving in mechanical sync, and that is what was missing in the first glance. Their lack of similarity separated them initially. At second glance, there is something underlying their mere physical bodies that they share.

They have been put together, and only if the observer pulls back to take in the bigger picture in a third, long look, can that be seen. The pawn and the bishop have little in common but color on the chess board, but their player still moves them as he wills to capture an opposing piece and bring it, defeated, to his hand. That is the larger picture, the forest instead of the trees. What's important is not which Autobot works beside whom, or why the group moves so slowly across such a short distance. The larger picture is the controller, the player, and the game he plays.

What of the observer? A blue visor as great as a redwood raises, and for a moment, something in the sky is bathed in reflected blue light. Something winged, and so very, very tiny as it flutters in sudden alarm. Is it Laserbeak? Do the Decepticons watch? Is there a rescue in the future? Is there hope waiting for the helpless Decepticon if he would only cast his despairing optics upward to see it?

The blue glow disappears as the player dismisses the observer, and, startled, a curious little bird flies away.


	6. Pt 5

**Warning:** **Read this fic at your own risk.**

_It is not necessary to read the _Footnotes_ series to understand this fic, but it is set in the same universe. Some of the world-building is involved._

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><p><strong>[* * * * *]<strong>

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><p><em>From TFWiki –<br>joor = 6 hours  
>cycle = 1.25 hours<br>breem = 8.3 minutes  
>klik = 1.2 minutes<em>

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><p><strong>[* * * * *]<strong>

**Pt. 5**

**[* * * * *]**

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><p><strong>Error<strong>

_No._

It didn't matter what he ordered his feet to do. They were attached to his body, and his body listened to no logic.

**Temperature control**

_Stop._

He understood his options: obey or die. His body only understood that peril loomed larger than the sky above him. It could feel the sky disappear and the weight of an immense gaze bearing down, and it twisted in increasingly frantic attempts to flee. His arms wrenched against the hands holding them, and his feet pushed at the dirt in a futile bid for traction.

**Danger danger danger**

_I know, I know!_

A pathetic attempt - really, what kind of distance could he possibly gain by foot? - but all his body knew was the brainless panic of a caged wild bird. The bars were barbed wire and electric, but anything was worth a bid for freedom to that bird's cage-crazed mind. The danger here and now overwhelmed the knowledge that escape wasn't possible. A storm front of danger crackled fast as lightning through his circuitry. He struggled because fear had no control switch. If it did, it was currently jammed to the highest setting, and the jittery voltage making him shake couldn't be shut off.

And still the hand waited to receive him. Step by slow step, the drones forced him nearer.

**Access**

_Stop!_

**Denied error**

When they halted, the Decepticon almost didn't notice. Alarms scrolled across his HUD, and he shook too violently to see past the motion smears. Everything around him moved, blotted out by the visual screaming of his onboard alert system. His systems were in flux, and the rushing sound of a hydroelectric dam filled his audios until he could barely hear himself think. The _whoosh_ of over-heated air through his intakes made his head feel too light, wobbling on his neck, but the heavy sound of fluids gurgling through his systems swooped from audio to audio. It rocked him, body compensating for fluid shift that wasn't really happening. All of his fluids weren't really sloshing from side to side, but his audios were as fritzed as the rest of his body. They heard an ocean contained in his body, and his head bobbed in rhythm with the waves. Over the sound of an alien tide clicked the tiny mechanical noises of automated systems going haywire as his body upset normal functions in its desperate search.

**Danger low fuel**

_I KNOW._

**Proximity alert**

Words blinked in glaring red wherever he turned, and his head kept turning. His body blindly searched for an escape. A sudden pinch captured his chin, but he couldn't stop squirming. He couldn't stop himself, no matter how he tried.

**Statis lock imminent**

**Danger**

Terror fed into panic, panic overwhelmed his mind, and his right thruster dug deep into hard ground in a startling bite of traction. His legs stopped scrambling and locked straight, heaving his whole body in a panic-driven arch upward. It was a spot of leverage, a meager opportunity to get away away _away -_

The hold on his chin became a clamped vise, and the rushing, hypnotizing sound of a hydroelectric dam faltered right before a sudden _CLANG!_ shook the world.

One world, anyway, small but important to its sole occupant.

Thundercracker's optics shut down, flickered, and reset. For a split second, he hid in the featureless darkness behind offlined optics as his onboard systems rebooted. No fuel gauges rang silent alarms. No radar or lidar were online to send his proximity alerts into a spinning tizzy. For a short, wonderful, blissful moment in time, the Decepticon reveled in ignorance. Any second now, Starscream would buzz a report demand, and Skywarp would teleport into his quarters to pounce on him because he was late for their shift, and Thundercracker would online his optics and go on with life because this had all been a bad defragment.

Any second now.

**Danger: low fuel.**

_I've never been that lucky._

Reality intruded into Thundercracker's wistful second of fantasy, and it's arrival had the predictable tragedy of Motormaster at a tea party: everything came crashing down. Skywarp and Starscream were not here. This was not a dream, but a waking nightmare. The side of the jet's face throbbed warm counterpoint to cold, encroaching knowledge. The low fuel warning was the first in the cascade of minor damage reports as self-repair re-catalogued and updated the queue. The dent on his cheek was the most recent damage, and mostly cosmetic for all that the smack of hand meeting face had been loud enough to have sent him to his knees. If he hadn't been held up, that was.

His audios had been dialed up too far as overreaction to an emergency situation. It'd made a slap to the face sound like a full-body impact. That, at least, he could deal with right now.

He seized control of his onboard computer's subroutines before they scrolled back online. There was no time to delve deep enough into each directory and hardware work-around to reclaim his command codes for his engines or thrusters, but he could do this in the seconds before his CPU started firing at random again.

** Command order: realignment sequence: start.**

**Realignment sequence: start: Y/N?**

**Yes. Command order: audio array Priority 1. **

**Audio array: Priority 1: Y/N?**

**Yes. **

**Realignment sequence: Priority 1: start.**

**Command order: visual array software: profile.**

**Visual array software: profile: Access granted. **

**Command order: change Heads Up Display profile.**

**HUD: profile change: Access denied.**

_Ratchet! Frag your rusty processer!_** Command order: visual array hardware: reset HUD software interface access.**

**HUD software interface access: Access denied. Ah, ah, ah! What's the magic word? **

_…what?_ **Command order: visual array hardware: reset HUD software interface access.**

**HUD software interface access: Access denied. Ah, ah, ah! What's the magic word?**

_…Ratchet. I swear that you will die. _**Command order: visual array hardware: reset HUD software interface access: password entry: "please." **

**HUD software interface access: Access denied. Ah, ah, ah! What's the magic word?**

_I will MURDER you, Autobot._ ** Command order: visual array hardware: reset HUD software interface access: password entry: "abracadabra."**

**HUD software interface access: Access denied. Ah, ah, ah! What's the magic word?**

**Command order: visual array hardware: reset HUD software interface access: password entry: "open sesame."**

**HUD software interface access: Access denied. Ah, ah, ah! What's the magic word?**

**Command order: visual array hardware: reset HUD software interface access: password entry: "pretty please."**

**HUD software interface access: Access denied. Ah, ah, ah! What's the magic word?**

**Command order: visual array hardware: reset HUD software interface access: password entry: "kill you dead."**

**HUD software interface access: Access denied. Ah, ah, ah! What's the magic word?**

_Die, die, DIE! Get compacted by a junkyard Pit boss and get the SLAG out of my command codes! Reprogramming my own CPU should NOT be this difficult. I don't care how long he had that override in me, it's MINE, not - it cannot be that simple. It just can't be._ **Command order: visual array hardware: reset HUD software interface access: magic word entry: "please."**

**HUD software interface access: Access granted. HUD software access reset complete.**

_Oh, for the love of… _** Command order: visual array software: profile access.**

**Visual array software: profile access granted. **

**Command order: change Heads Up Display profile.**

**HUD: profile change: input file name.**

_Yes! _**File name: .**

**HUD: profile change: Y/N?**

**Yes. ** _Ratchet, if I have to run one more hardware bypass around your sense of humor, I will reach into my own head and strangle you with program code._

**HUD: profile change: complete.**

Thundercracker's optics flared with overlaid lines of numbers, resetting as his HUD shifted mission profiles. Profile ' ' settled into place with a mental kick that shunted every proximity alert to one side. His head tipped, an involuntary reflex as his vision abruptly weighted blaringly red on that side. The alerts filed neatly under the continually blinking error messages from his body. They still visually shrieked warnings about proximity to a massive energy signature classified as '_Very Dangerous, like whoa'_, but they'd cleared his field of vision. Which, in turn, made him all the more aware of the rest of the messages.

His fans were inactive. They spun haphazardly from the temperature difference inside and out, useless little spins like a captive bird beating its wings against glass walls, but they weren't actually moving cool air through overstressed systems. They roared into action in when he rerouted power back to his intake system. His repair list updated. Low fuel warnings bleated louder, and statis lock threatened. His body was dredging his damp tank for the last of the energon.

The countdown until statis lock ticked in the bottom left corner of his HUD: 1.13 breems.

That was a Not Good thing. Thundercracker had more important things to worry about, however, which said quite a bit about his about his situation. Error messages to his right, countdown to statis lock to his left, and yet what held Thundercracker's undivided attention was the drone.

It stood directly in front of him, hand keeping his chin down to compensate for their height difference. This drone was the shorter of the three, a dark-colored Autobot with some form of a car for an alternate mode, but size didn't matter. Not when this Autobot was a drone with a dronemaster the size of a mountain. The only reason Thundercracker stared at the drone instead of its controller was cowardice. Or perhaps realism. He knew too well that his handle on terror was weak at best. If he looked up…

_Don't look up_.

The hand that had grabbed his chin loosened from vise-clamp to mere firm hold, presumably because the captive Decepticon seemed to have regained some lucidity. The Seeker still wasn't standing on his own, but he wasn't mindlessly struggling in the drones' arms anymore. Smacked out of panic, he stared back at the drone and took in his situation.

The paler, larger drone behind him had twisted his right arm up between his wings in a come-along hold, pulling back just enough to balance the jet on the fine edge of pain. It was very clear that trying to get free would be a painful and pointless. The opposite hand had found a hold on the outside edge of Thundercracker's air intake, and the drone's elbow was an immobile weight pinning the jet's free arm to his side. The drone stood with the side of its leg wedged between Thundercracker's thighs, pulling the jet back against its hip in such a way that it lifted him to the tips of his feet. The hold denied the Seeker any leverage whatsoever by minimizing contact with the ground.

It also arched his torso upward awkwardly, and the smaller drone made the arch even more uncomfortable by forcing his chin down until his neck strained. It studied his face with the impassive expression of an emotionless robot, and Thundercracker stared back. He didn't know what to do, much less to say. The Autobot - and there was really only one, if the other three were all drones - had commanded him to come forward. Had given him no choice but to obey, in fact. If the Autobot wanted him to stop now, he had no choice in the matter.

The hand that had slapped him out of his hysteria returned. Thundercracker eyed it warily.

It didn't slap him again. This wasn't exactly good news.

The fingertips touched the side of his face, trailing up and over his cheek guards to cup over the helm vents. They were now blasting hot air. The hand stayed there long enough that the jet nervously closed the vents on that side, watching the drone for any sign that it'd been the wrong thing to do. The drone's visor gave no indication of approval or disapproval, but its hand eased flat until the palm _tink_ed as it slid slowly down the closed vents. The fingers dropped off the end of the vent and twisted to run under the bottom edge of Thundercracker's helm to where cheek guard met jawline. Three fingers paused, waiting as the forefinger followed his jawline back. The jet stared fixedly straight ahead at the drone, trying not to betray his unease with the finger rubbing tiny circles under his helm.

It dragged back down his jawline, rejoining the other three fingers. They lay against his jaw, slowly flattening from fingertips to the pads until the drone's whole hand held his jaw. It was a laughable parody of a lover's caress; if Thundercracker turned his head, he'd nuzzle his face into the hand. As it was, if not for the restraining hold on his chin, he'd have jerked his head away from the touch entirely. It sent revulsion stabbing through him.

The hand lingered, waiting until the jet stopped his futile attempt to turn away, and then slid forward, under his helm. The fingers searched up to the pivotal point where neck met the all-important cerebral unit, the head, the second most heavily armored place on his body. Next to his spark and lasercore, this area held a Seeker's most vital systems: mind, memory, and spark integration. Destroy the lasercore, and it would destroy his body. Destroy the head, and it would destroy his mind, leaving nothing but a highly advanced robot. Everything a hacker needed was stored here. Everything needed to turn a mech into a drone was under the helm.

He jerked as if struck as that thought burst into the forefront of his mind, but the fingers feathered down without pausing. Lightly enough to be imagined, they tripped across the protective plates, fuel lines, and cabling on his throat. Up again, underneath the helm, and they burrowed into the small gape on the other side to make him flinch and shudder. The drone's emotionless face never changed, but the head tilted to one side as if studying his reaction. Thundercracker stared back, wrestling down helpless fear. His feet dug shallow furrows in the ground until the leg between his own hitched him just a little higher, out of contact with the ground entirely. He took the hint and froze, but his closed helm vents flipped open. It was all the movement he could allow himself, and the fans cycled too fast as if to make up for suppressed struggles.

The fingers nestled in the vulnerable join slipped out one by one, deliberately scraping against helm and frail internal structure. Each scrape sent shudders of visceral horror through the jet's wings, and only the sudden painful grip on his chin let him know that he was trying to pull his head away again. He tried to stop, but it was an involuntary jerking reflex: a slight but violent spasm of his upper body in time with his fans' suddenly erratic pace. The fingers on his throat paused in their retreat, then advanced again toward the opening in his armor. The hand on his chin twisted his head to one side, and the opening gaped wider. A new line of alarms scrolled up the side of his HUD.

"Don't do that!" Thundercracker got out, and it hurt to talk, moving his chin against the vise-grip. He flinched, and that hurt too, as the fingers forced further into the join. His internal shields weren't meant to protect against physical invasion, and he _felt_ a piece inside of his head deform as a finger stabbed in. "I'm not trying to - " One fingertip curled, just the last joint, but that was enough to bend thin metal structures, and emergency protocols howled.

Thundercracker bucked, a violent lurch up, before he could stop himself. His body shied to one side, dipping diagonally to free his wings as one foot flailed, trying to find something to brace against. Not half a second later, his captive arm creaked against the shoulder joint as the larger drone pulled; the hand on his intake pushed the opposite direction from the attempted dodge. The Seeker yelped as he snapped back into place, body responding to the pain before conscious thought. He arched back, knees pulling up as if to kick at the small drone, but the fingers hooked, caught, and pulled excruciatingly _down_.

He jolted just once and went stiff and still. "**Stop!**" he gasped, and his head bobbed in a painful tug-of-war between the hard hand on his chin and the stressed, sharp pain stabbing from under his helm. Defeated, he sagged in the drones' hands. "Stop."

A small sound, almost a whimper, came from him when the restraining hands crushed down for a telling moment more before slackening. _Bad Decepticon. No trying to get away_.

He stomped on every subprogram that tried to activate as fingers slipped out of the now-buckled join. Yes, he knew very well that there were foreign objects endangering sensitive equipment. Yes, he knew emergency protocols wanted to activate and dislodge the intruding objects. Unfortunately, knowing and being able to do anything about it were two entirely different things right now. He locked down his onboard computer's defense subroutines and reached for stoicism as the hand crept to the other side, walking tip-by-tip like a sinister spider across his tense throat. Fuel lines gurgled with nausea and armor plating quivered, inadequate defense from the unseen spider's cruel legs. It crawled under his helm and probed while invasive sensor ghosts skittered under Thundercracker's armor and down his back; an army of many-legged arachnids scurrying over the open planes of his wings, scratching spindly and terrible in his cockpit. The jet's turbines, still held off the ground, kicked back against nothing just once, and Thundercracker swallowed down another soft sound of protest.

**Access denied. Access denied.** scrolled red and blurred down the side of his vision.

A flashing burst of pain shot down his neck. One finger, far more frightening than any mere spider, had found a hold and given a short pull. Then the pressure bore down. The Seeker's vents whistled, fans running so fast they keened as his systems dealt with the pain. He tensed to the point of shaking but knew it was meant to test him. Lesson learned: _Don't fight back_.

It wouldn't have been so unnerving if not for the faintly approving nod the drone gave him. Autobots had used pain as discipline for Decepticon prisoners before, but they made it a clinical procedure of action/response. Guards who got too into inflicting pain on the prisoners were removed promptly. But here…when the grip released, the drone's fingers returned to their bizarre exploration of his face. It made no sense, and what couldn't be understood fed the terror already preying on Thundercracker's mind. He didn't understand why the dronemaster wearing this drone like an extra limb would want to caress the dent on his cheek. The gesture would be tender from a lover, analytical from a repair mech. From a drone, the touch was incomprehensible. It left him oddly paralyzed as he waited for the blow he was sure must follow.

The drone didn't seem to care that its captive stared at it in panicked, helpless dread. It watched its own fingertips as they stopped under one fear-wide optic. The forefinger lifted and just barely pressed down on red glass. The other three fingers remained under the optic, feeling the way the softer metal of Thundercracker's face changed. Tiny mechanisms triggered by proximity and light sensed potential threat and automatically acted to narrow the aperture by tensing the cheek and squinting flexible metal plates around the edges. The plates shifted over the armor-grade glass to help shield it from damage. The forefinger followed the edges of the plates, tracing them even as they opened away from it, trying to evade the inquiring touch. It rejoined the other three fingers at the outer edge of the optic, leaving Thundercracker wide-opticked in its wake as it smoothed up and onto the overhang of his helm. The drone's hand stopped in the center and gently dropped the fingers one at a time from the overhang: _click tick ctick clik._

_Tunk_, and the thumb came down.

Thundercracker dimmed his optics and concentrated very, very hard on staying still. The middle finger lay flat down the bridge of his nose while the tips of the fingers on either side rested on his optics. Armor-grade or not, they were just red glass. He was well aware that those fingers were strong enough to punch through them. Yet no harm came. Thumb and little finger rested on the sharp angle of his cheek seams, tracing up and down in incremental movements that were weirdly delicate, as if harming him were the last thing that the drone would do. All evidence to the contrary, of course. They slid off the seams and made little circles on the smooth plane of his cheek, blunting up against the seam again and again until they crossed up and over to run just slightly downward to the crease where Thundercracker's lips frowned. There, they stopped.

The three of them stayed that way for at least a klik: the paler drone holding the jet restrained, and the darker drone's hand on his face. The fingers covered his eyes, touched the corners of his lips, and the palm cupped over his mouth. The two drones held him between them, feeling the jet's systems whine feebly, feeling the hot air from ventilation and the anxious shifting of armor plating. Feeling the details that seemed inconsequential on a large scale and were actually quite important up close and personal.

And the drones moved in, a miniscule movement closer, to feel it all.

His HUD timer counted down: one breem. Less than nine minutes until statis lock, and Thundercracker stirred uneasily. He should say something. He had to say something. He coughed to jumpstart his vocalizer and jerked in surprise when the drone behind him tightened his hold. He wasn't sure if that was a warning to shut up or not.

It seemed to prompt the other drone to move, whatever it was meant to do. Fingers drew slowly down his face, following his nose down until they brushed down, traced over his lips - and retraced. The fingers curled up, away, until only the back of the forefinger rested on his chin. The thumb lingered, stroking back and forth over the softer metal. The scrape of metal on metal sounded pliable, like the slide of silk over the jet's mouth. Once, twice, three times, until finally it slid to a stop in the center of his lower lip. It prodded, and the drone closely watched the lip give.

Thundercracker thought of opening his mouth, asking what was going on, but thought better of it before his lips did more than briefly part. The hand holding his chin down pinched, making sure he was paying attention, and then deliberately let go. The hand dropped away. The Decepticon winced just a bit, optics glued to the hand as he waited for the hit he was sure would follow.

It didn't come. The drone's arm stayed at his side. Confused, Thundercracker's optics flickered to the drone, who watched him steadily in return. It was probably Thundercracker's imagination, but he could have sworn there was challenge in the controlled mech's posture. The thumb on his bottom lip remained; not holding, just resting there as if it belonged. As if it could _ever_ belong.

Anger, smothered into weak embers by terror, wafted up a plume of smoky rage in the back of his mind. Thundercracker tried to blow it out of his thoughts. He tried not to give in to the urgent desire - need, really - to draw his face up and away from that greedy hand and its accursed spider-like fingers. It was a trap. It _had_ to be a trap. That was the only thing that he could think of to explain the drone's odd behavior, and even that didn't explain anything. He didn't understand why any of this was happening, but he understood that moving would be a mistake! The drone was a guard, and guards trained prisoners to respond to certain cues. If Thundercracker was reading this cue right, he'd just been told, _"Sit. Stay. Good jet."_

It was humiliating, but being a prisoner always was. It was better to focus on that than on…other things. He fought the burning need to struggle and won, although he had to swallow an angry tirade of words and tuck his chin even further down to prevent himself from rebelling.

The drone watched his every twitching expression with a mindless robot's disinterest, but the thumb stayed. After a moment, it wandered, following the unhappy curve of Thundercracker's lip with the broad pad. It came to rest at the corner of his mouth.

"Open."

The strangeness of the situation, the fear and anger, slowed his reaction time. Combined with the utterly out-of-nowhere order, it left Thundercracker stupefied. He just stared.

The drone didn't acknowledge his dumbfounded look. The pad of the thumb smoothed back over the jet's lip, but there was a hint of pressure now. It pulled a little, and Thundercracker felt as if his audios were mocking him. Had the drone - the Autobot - just told him to open his mouth? _Why?_

The thought became question, sounding bewildered even to his own audios. "Why?" He also sounded meeker than he liked, and he shook his head. Once he started, his head just kept on shaking in denial. Not against the hated thumb drawing his lip down, although for Primus' sake _cut that out_, but against the fear. He was angry, yes, but the tips of his wings still shivered as survival subroutines fought to take over. Everything beneath his tenuous surface control was roiling, full-on chaos as he dug through escape plans, bargaining pleas, blackmail files, old information - and new, he didn't even care at this point if he betrayed Megatron, just get him away from here! - in a desperate attempt to find something, anything, to use right now.

The drone's thumb was dislodged, and a bass rumble shook the very air. Thundercracker uneasy squirming halted like the sound was a gearlock. His armor clamped tight, his wings went down and back as his shoulders hiked up in to protect his neck, and his chin tucked down in unconscious obedience. That sound was distinctly…displeased.

"Open," the drone demanded again, thumb back and pressed harshly to the jet's bottom lip.

The Seeker wanted to obey. Everything in him shrieked at him to obey. Optics wide and body trembling, Thundercracker mutely nodded even as his head abruptly turned away. That intense sound boomed through him again, and his fluids jittered, but he couldn't do it. He just couldn't. He wanted to, but he _couldn't_. He was too scared to comply.

He cried out, startled, as he was dropped with no warning. The drone behind him had released his arm and air intake, but before he could do more than stagger drunkenly as his legs failed to lock straight, hands clamped onto the vents on either side of his helm. They twisted his head to face forward, and a sinkhole of horror punched through Thundercracker as he felt his neck linkages turn and strain. The drone was going to tear his head off!

Terror _consumed_ him, and his voice came out a strangled plea, "No, don't, wait, I can - I can be useful!" His hands rose and stopped, frozen between surrender and defense. "I - I know the command codes for the space bridge!" Megatron would brand him traitor for even offering that information, much less actually handing it over, but if the choice was Megatron's wrath or Ratchet having free reign over his corpse(1), well, bitter choice that it was, only one didn't involve immediate execution.

"Silence."

The single, surround-sound word couldn't have been more than a quiet order, but it was still loud enough to stress his audios and rattle his internals. Feedback whined for a moment. Even with the ' ' HUD profile and its neat frames, the error warnings were beginning to dance through his vision. Thundercracker shut his optics off and whimpered audibly, another information offer squelched down to the faintest thread of pleading noise. His hands shook violently, still held up in helpless appeal. His legs shook so badly they didn't have a chance at supporting him, and despite the hands keeping his head steady, he ended up slumped back against the drone behind him. A proximity alert blipped, ever-so-helpfully informing him that the smaller drone was reaching for him again, and his feet scrambled at the ground.

It was an involuntarily motion. He was almost grateful for the drone propping him up. He might have tried to escape again, conscious mind barely afloat in hysteria, but instead he only ended up pushing back into the drone. His hands dropped, trying to brace him against whatever was coming. His palms slid off of broad thigh armor until they found handholds along the seams. His hands clenched tight enough to stress-pop the knuckles, and he hunched his shoulders, waiting.

There was a slow touch, a testing caress that traced tenderly down his jawline to the tip of his chin. It paused there. Thundercracker dug his fingers deeper into the drone behind him, uncaring of the dents he left behind. It's not like a drone cared. He forced his legs straight, pushing his wings flat against the drone's chest as if he could hide there. His ventilation system clenched, vents shutting and power rerouting as pure, whirling dread gathered behind his spark.

The finger slid up and settled over his lips. They quivered under it. The pressure was gentle, but definitely present.

"Open."

Self-preservation fought stark, senseless fear. Thundercracker focused on temperature control warnings: sharp, blinking facts he could deal with, red against the offline black of deactivated optics. **Danger: temperature control error. **His ventilation system was down, intakes intentionally closed, and his internal temperature skyrocketed inevitably into redline. He'd never really cooled down since he'd come back online under Ratchet's ongoing adventures in medical malpractice.** Danger: temperature control error. **His systems had to compensate. He wasn't routing the power back, so there was only one other method of cooling left to him if he could just manage to unstick his fool lips enough to _obey the fragging command _before he_ got himself killed! _**Danger: temperature control error. **

The Seeker made an impossibly hopeless noise, like a kitten suffocating in a plastic bag, and his lips cracked open.

Just like that, tension collapsed into shuddering submission. Thundercracker sucked a huge gulp of air in through his mouth and collapsed in on himself. One hand still supported his weight on the larger drone, but his other hand fumbled, reaching out to press against the small drone's chest. His optics lit, dull red and somehow broken, and he stared at his hand over the purple Autobot insignia. There was no power behind the shove, but he couldn't stop himself from giving that weak protest as the drone's fingers slid into his mouth.

He'd thought he was humiliated before, but he gagged on a choking fistful of disgrace now. His teeth were being tested as if he were some sort of Earth animal being inspected for sale. The fingers slicked along the interior surface of the dental moulds, upper and lower, before moving up onto the impact surfaces. Those were pressed individually by the invading fingers, first by the pads and then by the tips. The canines were given special attention, fingers scraping over and over the sharp points. Once they had been thoroughly explored, the fingers pushed under his lips to tap along the outside of the moulds. The other hand joined the first, peeling Thundercracker's lips back, and he desperately wished he could just thrust the drone away as it stepped even closer to peer at his teeth.

Okay, so the Earth-stranded Decepticons had some curious dental moulds. Were he in a more rational frame of mind, he might even be able to understand the interest. Cybertronians blended into new worlds, and when the dominant lifeforms were sentient, that often meant adopting some of their recognizable features. Teeth, in the case of humankind. Most Cybertronians with oral intakes had filters and grade sensors of some form or another inside. Adapting the exteriors to resemble human teeth had required a few days at most while their scanners assembled data to adjust root and alternate modes to a new world. It had resulted in odd dental moulds, but they weren't inconvenient or unsightly. Just…very Earth(2).

It had never occurred to Thundercracker to be self-conscious about his Earth adaptations. Now he found himself pushing feebly against the drone's chest, practically cringing with embarrassment as they were examined closely. Forefinger and thumb probed into his mouth again, squeezing at top and bottom canines while the jet forcefully kept his vents shut and panted through his mouth around the digits moving busily from tooth to tooth. .72 breems until statis lock, and all he could think when the urgent alarms rang though his head was that at least this would soon be over.

The drone suddenly withdrew its hand, glistening with the dry, plasticky sheen of oral fluid. "They will do."

Oh, and wasn't that an ominous?

His mouth worked for a moment, tasting foreign metal and the ashes of pride. "Do for what?" he asked, cautious and low and painstakingly not confrontational. He wanted to demand answers, but nobody could be that stupid. Not in this situation, anyway, with that shadow looming over him.

_Don't look up._

Eerily efficient, and there was something fundamentally wrong about watching a mech do this with no more emotion than Soundwave cleaning a gun, the drone touched its own throat and found a major fuel line by feel. The Seeker felt vaguely sick as fingers that had teased over his own cables and vulnerable spots pinched until the line sprouted a leak. Brightly glowing energon fountained from drone's throat, and the sick feeling intensified. It clawed at Thundercracker's gut, coiling into a knot of hunger that hit him like a freight train. He knew it was his depleted systems. He knew he was drained to the point of deactivation. That didn't make it any less disgusting to have this sudden craving for the bluish-pink processed fuel dripping from another mech's lines. He wanted, needed, that energon, and he was wholly revolted by the barbaric slavering of his systems. There were ways to transfer fuel in desperate situations, and this was not the way!

Regardless of method, he couldn't even muster the will to resist as the hands on his head guided him forward. .69 breems until statis lock, and his empty tank continually pinged machine-level _need_. This wasn't fuel sharing. He didn't know what it was. One more violation added to the list. He resolutely offlined his optics even as the familiar rich, electric tang of the universe's most concentrated energy source flooded the air and stole a needy groan past the grim set of his mouth. The scent - even the dripping, liquid sound - assaulted him on the most basic level and triggered his intake system.

Primus smelt him for being a monster, but he was drinking before he even knew his lips opened to accept the ruptured line.

The hands guided him, giving him an excuse to accept and take and take more - and he did. Processed fuel, more potent because his own systems didn't have to spare energy to process the energon into acceptable grade levels. Not that he had a processing plant anymore, but his remaining tank rumbled online as the first swallow hit bottom. This energon wasn't the higher grade level flight engines required, but right now, his body wasn't about to fuss about the difference. His mouth shifted, and he pulled against the hands to resettle further up the line. He hated himself already, and he nosed further under the drone's chin with a moaned objection even as he suckled at the fuel line. The hand braced against the purple Autobot brand had become a greedy clutch wrapped around the drone's chest, and his other hand came up to cradle the back of the drone's neck. Instead of fighting, the drone's head fell back to allow better access. He couldn't stop licking and nipping at the tear, impatient, wanting more and feeling his tank ruthlessly refuse his lackluster attempt at rejecting the fuel.

**Command order: fuel system: emergency purge: initiate**.

**Access denied.**

_Screw you too, Ratchet._

It wasn't enough, it couldn't even be close to enough for his drained tanks unless he nursed the drone's throat dry, but the hands on his head pulled him back. Reluctant, he let go. Then, revolted, he shoved away from the weeping wound. Something in his tank twisted emptily to see the bright drip of wasted fuel down the small drone's chestplate, but Thundercracker shut his teeth on a complaining whine. His internals felt fluid, pumping power back into sluggish reservoirs and out into his body. The shaky, ill feeling of revulsion was strictly mental; his body felt undeniably better. Self-repair re-prioritized and spun up a new countdown: 2.23 breems until statis.

A wild laugh welled up inside him. Over 18 minutes! He felt so liberated!

The hands on his helm let go, and Thundercracker lunged forward like a freed bird seeing open sky. Locked into automatic subroutine, his body dodged around the small drone even as his entire HUD lit up in shrilling-red warnings and he railed frantic orders at his own CPU.

**Command order: override.**

**Access denied. **

**Command order: override, you Pit-slag knock-off program from Swindle's bargain bin!**

**Command not understood. **

The entire sky swung tipsily, whirling around him like a crazy fishbowl picture display. He yelled in surprise and acute, shocking pain as he was yanked backward by his wings. The screech of abused metal was echoed by a full-throated scream as the dizzying whirl came to a sudden halt with an equally hard pull in the opposite direction, threatening to rip his wings off. The two drones, dark and pale, faced him in impassive witness, and Thundercracker writhed as the third drone _pulled_ like it'd pluck the wings from his back. The third drone, the forgotten one, the biggest drone but still scarily small compared to -

"Stop, stop, stop!" someone was sobbing, stuttering out words in a keened, pathetic shout that broke into static as something in the Seeker's back _crack_ed. He vaguely recognized the voice, but it wasn't until he was unceremoniously dumped in a dazed pile on the ground that he realized it was him making all that racket. The gravity of the situation stayed distant for a blank moment more. What struck him right then was that having his wings ripped off would hurt, but he'd suffered pain before. He was a veteran of countless battles, and he'd endured both interrogation and torture.

What he had never faced, and what rushed in to shred rational thought as the biggest drone picked him up by one wing, was the Autobot kneeling above him. Not even standing. _Kneeling_, the Autobot filled the sky until there was no room to fly. The hand he was thrown on to was larger than a docking platform. He hit the palm rolling and was up on his feet by momentum, sprinting for the other side because he'd felt fear when grounded and fear when flying, but he'd never felt the fear that came when standing in a hostile mech's _hand_.

He was still running when the hand lifted, and then he wasn't running anymore.

He was falling.

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><p><strong>[* * *]<strong>

**Footnotes**

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><p>(1)For some reason, that was the most petrifying aspect of that particular moment. He was utterly terrified that he was about to be executed for no reason and with no chance to fight back, or smashed into crumpled wings and gooey internal systems, yet all his mind could dwell on was Ratchet gleefully playing with his grayed-out remnants. The Autobots typically recycled the dead, just like the Decepticons, and the idea of the psychotic medic defiling him instead of melting his body down was a violation almost worse than death. Almost.<p>

(2)Understanding the cultural implications of teeth had taken longer. Where the Autobots wanted humans to see them as equal, the Decepticons wanted to tread that fine line of blending in enough to be acceptable while coming across as the dominant species. Elongated canines and sharper-than-normal teeth played into that. Megatron had chosen the alien aspect of perfectly straight, blunt teeth that weirded humans out without them even realizing it. Most of the other Decepticons had chosen dental moulds with larger canines than usual, playing on the predatory hindbrains of Earth's primitive inhabitants. Starscream had abnormally sharp teeth anyway, as he never hesitated to arm anything he could potentially use as an escape tool, and only a ruling from Megatron himself had prevented Skywarp from modifying himself with a mouthful of oversized, jagged fangs. While the intimidation factor couldn't be argued, common theory among the Decepticons held that Megatron just didn't want Starscream deciding it was a great idea, too, and trying to tear out the warlord's throat. Gory bite marks on the neck were never pretty. And they looked awful funny on the shins.


	7. Pt 6

**Warning:** **Read this fic at your own risk. All previous warnings apply.**

_It is not necessary to read the _Footnotes_ series to understand this fic, but it is set in the same universe. Some of the world-building is involved._

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><p><strong>[* * * * *]<strong>

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><p><em>From TFWiki –<br>joor = 6 hours  
>cycle = 1.25 hours<br>breem = 8.3 minutes  
>klik = 1.2 minutes<em>

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><p><strong>[* * * * *]<strong>

**6**

**[* * * * *]**

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><p>He was falling.<p>

_He was falling_.

For a horrible moment, less than a fraction of a second, the ground distorted. It seemed to take a half-turn around Thundercracker like a cyclone trick of the optic as his body fought for a grip on thin air. It was a feeling - and sight - familiar to any flyer who'd ever spun out of control. There was just enough time to see it coming, and then his cockpit smashed into metal. His hands and knees smacked down immediately after, but his helm still catapulted forward in whiplash that left him woozy. If he hadn't been near the edge, it would have ricocheted his head off metal as well, and he would have been in no condition to notice how his fall stopped.

In fact, all he really noticed was the brief, heavy pull of his own weight. He thought, rather stupidly in that short moment of recovery, that he'd taken on mass. A second later, he realized it was that crucial moment in takeoff: the second when wings caught air. It felt like the starting moment after stepping into the _Victory_'s docking elevator, that moment when the counterweights released to pull the elevator cables. That risky moment when flight engines turned over lift to an anti-gravity generator, and a flyer bet that he'd win the fight against gravity.

Acceleration straight upward _whoomp_ed Thundercracker's wings flat.

It felt like being inside Astrotrain during launch. It had all the wallop of engines capable of breaking atmosphere. There was also all the air pressure of taking off under his own power, but multiplied thirty times over for sheer power. No mere flight engines could launch a mech this quickly. Thundercracker wheezed, air pressure forcing him in a flat sprawl. He rocked on his cockpit in a very uncomfortable position while his systems jumped to adjust and his optics cleared of static.

He didn't understand what he saw at first. It didn't help that his head was over the edge of the Autobot's hand, forced forward and down by acceleration, but even accounting for that...the view caused Thundercracker, an experienced flyer, to reset his optics against vertigo. The ground twirled, swirling like someone had stuck a spoon in it and stirred. Wait, no, rapid expansion of his field of vision just made it seem like it moved. Was it moving? He was falling toward it. He was spinning above it. It was rushing away from him. _What in the..?_

With a sudden, almost physical snap in perspective, the Seeker's vision finally stabilized. He was falling _up_.

How often did he look straight down when taking off? In battle, launching into the clear was first priority. Second priority was scanning for anyone targeting him, or for someone to target. His flight and weapons systems were dormant, bleating red error messages, however. Without their automatic system compensation clicking in, sensor feedback had his whole network in upset. Looking down as the ground vaulted away beneath him felt as disorienting as it looked. It just wasn't a sight he was used to seeing, especially when the ground was receding so very rapidly. The sudden shift in altitude had his head spinning.

The only comparison to be made was looking out of Astrotrain's shuttle doors during launch, and that was stupid. A mech who did that was just asking to be pitched out by acceleration. Astrotrain had cargo netting and passenger harnesses for good reason, and part of it was because the initial kick of launch was enough to embed a mech in the shuttle's back engine block. It was either hold onto something or become wall art, and however artistic they might be, Astrotrain complained for days about interior dents.

Falling upward. Thundercracker's neck ached from holding his head up against the rush of air pressure, but he couldn't stop watching. The Autobot was lifting him in one hand. Thundercracker was laying on a giant Autobot's hand, and that hand was an elevator speeding to a height taller than any gestalt, and -

- and -

_scrrrrreeeeee_

- and there was no passenger harness here.

"Frag me!" The same pressure that pressed him down also pushed, rushing in a powerful airfall over the edge of the hand. His cockpit was a relatively small surface to lay on, and its curved surface provided no resistance because it was frictionless glass. His position had been precariously to begin with, but it only grew worse when the wind caught a _slam_ over the broad planes of his wings. His hands scrabbled desperately as the pressure propelled him forward like a sailboat fighting a windstorm. His knees continued to scrape forward, metal screeching all the way. His feet flexed, trying to catch the front corners on something, anything, but the Autobot's hand was so huge there were no plating joins within reach. No friction pads, no plate edges, no joints or raised bolts to catch on. "Slag and Pit-scrap and rust-rotted spawn of the Unmaker - "

The armor was too smooth, he was too near the edge, and Thundercracker's hands slipped and slipped again. He was backpedaling but going nowhere. He was, in fact, slowly sliding forward. Sliding _down!_ The curve of a normal-sized hand was gradual right until the end, when the vertical angle passed the point of no return. It was no different with a hand this size. The heels of his own hands struck sparks _scree screek_, but he was sliding down down and down.

His wings angled, flaps retracting, trying to be more narrow than they could physically be, trying to slice the wind instead of catch it. Yet still the air buffeted him.

The sky was a Seeker's sanctuary, but it had turned on him. Sanctuary to doom as air pressure cruelly tugged his hopes out from underneath him. Sick fear pulsed in time with each failed handhold, dropping a spreading beat of cold out from his spark with every centimeter slipped down the curve. The wind blew with malicious intent; a little boy sinking a paper sailboat, laughing at the pretended image of a desperate crew fighting the storm.

He was falling, torturously slow now but building momentum. If the lift continued, it'd launch him higher and higher into the air until he would fall flailing from a thousand times his own height. The ground was already far enough away to destroy him. Death from impact would litter his parts across the landscape. The ground was far enough away that he'd see it coming, be able to calculate the moment of impact, and there wasn't a thing he could do to stop it(1). His optics couldn't look away from the indistinct blobs of color that had been the three drones. He would fall, and he would die.

Thundercracker's frantic mind tore through the command list, flinging hardware overrides aside as the software bleated **Access denied. Access denied.** Without those command codes, his flight engines wouldn't start, his turbines were useless, and _he couldn't fly_.

Every flyer had a fear of heights under the right circumstances, and this was certainly the right time for it. The wrong time, but the right time, and Thundercracker was terrified.

His fingers slipped and slid, finding no traction, not even an uneven bump to cling to. The _screep_ing scratch of his knees sped up, and the sound coming out of Thundercracker's mouth was more wail than actual words. His vision spun, sick fear making the ground far below move in dizzy waves as the drones reduced to dots and gravity pushed him inevitably over the edge to join them. The command codes clicked, overrides bouncing machine-gun rapid off of Ratchet's code-hack.

**Access denied. Access denied.**

_scree scree scrreeee scretinkscree_

_screetink screetink tink screetiirrrrk_

The tiniest catch had him scrambling. It was just a bare lip of metal where plates had been bolted together at an angle, barely enough to register against even hypersensitive pressure sensors in his desperately searching hands, but it was better than nothing. Any hope at all was better than helplessly staring at oncoming doom as gravity pulled him down.

The plating was thick. Frag, considering the size of the Autobot, the plating was likely the thickness of Thundercracker's hand! He didn't stand a chance at warping armor that wide, but right now the odds were the last thing he wanted to take into consideration. He tore at the seam with frantic fingers. Metal sheared, paint flecking off in whole sheets as Thundercracker's hands scraped peels of metal off the sides of his own hands with the force of his efforts. The surface of the seams indented slightly. He scratched at the small gap, trying to force his fingertips into the shallow dip. It wasn't a hole so much as a dent, and he _needed_ it to be larger. He needed something to hold onto, not this, not this slick surface that his clawed fingers couldn't get a grip on!

Raw metal on hands and plating alike gave him a greater grip as the friction of metal on metal increased, but all that caused was sparks as his palms scraped uselessly forward. Because he was still sliding forward, and only seconds had passed but there was no _time!_

Thundercracker gritted his teeth and straightened his left hand. This was going to hurt.

He stabbed his hand like a chisel straight into the small marks left at the plate seam. The tips of his fingers shrieked stress warnings, then pain as he ground them into the miniscule gap. If the Autobot's plating wouldn't warp, then there was only one mech whose plating would. His wrist bent sharply, and he fisted his right hand.

A deep grunt of pain vanished into the roar of wind as he brought it down on his left wrist. This was idiocy. This was desperation. This was a Seeker using his own body as a hammer and wedge, pounding his fingers desperately into armor plating like an ant chewing a hole in an armored knight. It wasn't going to work. His thinner plating didn't stand a chance, and his hands had nothing to hold onto as his body started the excruciatingly slow, inevitable slide that wasn't going to stop no matter how his hands struck sparks and -

- _caught_ -

Something cracked in his wrist as his body twisted, pulled downward, and Thundercracker couldn't care less. The pain was sudden and shocking, but as the sick slide turned into a sideways fall that swung him from side to side instead of _down_, he didn't care. He didn't care. All he could see was the swathe of scarred paint and metal, and all he could feel was the tight pinch as his fingers twisted in their self-made hole. He didn't dare move despite how his whole body swung wildly. Gravity had been delayed, not denied.

The Seeker hung rigid. His deactivated thrusters dangled over open air. Gravity was ever…so…slowly grinding his hand loose. The cables were stretching, and even clamping his right hand over his left wrist couldn't keep the already-damaged joint from dislocating again. Numb pain panged his entire arm in a popping lurch exactly like cables connectors giving way. Panic bubbled in time with the cable-pops as fine motor control was lost, but the pain came through clearly. The knuckle joints snapped, one at a time, shooting electric bolts of pain down his arm in terrible jolts that threatened to make his arm jerk with each _snap_. Self-repair updated his HUD, but that was the least of his concerns right now!

His fingers had caught where metal on both Autobot and Decepticon plating had separated, like the turns of a screw locking into a hole's screw threads. Ruptured fluid lines leaked lubricant and energon into the self-made hole. Now, greased by his fluids, that grip was slipping. With every helpless swing of his weight, the threads stripped a little more.

Sparks popped out of the tiny handhold, fat and white. They came out individually with the screw-turn of his fingers, but they were popping faster.

Red optics had gone wide, but the optical sensors spiraled into pinpricks of light. Thundercracker's entire world was made of rushing air, gravity's hungry pull, and the uncertain catch of his torn fingers on slippery metal.

"Holy Primus," he whispered hoarsely without even realizing he'd exhausted every other resource. His rattled processors were too centered on calculating mass, force, and velocity to recognize bottom when he reached it. The numbers were _not_ good. Twenty-five seconds, counting down, and the sparks were speeding up. He'd never been a believer, but when there's nothing left to hold onto… "Watch over our sparks. Light our darkest hour and guide us through the empty void. Lift us from the Pit and bring us home again. Holy Primus. Watch over ouoohh**hhfraaag!**"

Two seconds seemed to take entire kliks. The gigantic Autobot finished standing, and for a chilling, slick-fingered and hand-slipping moment, gravity and normal force fought over the toy-sized Decepticon clinging hysterically to his hand. For just those two seconds, momentum launched the Seeker like a stone from a slingshot.

Thundercracker kept going up. He went from sliding down the hand's side, thrusters kicking nothing but the air underneath, to suddenly looking down at the palm he'd slid from. His abused wrist cracked again, twisting further as warnings shrilled red and pained, and the prayer became a strangled curse. He _felt_ his fingers slip free, and the sound he made would have been a scream if he'd been able to clear his vocalizer of static enough to make a noise. His right hand stabbed into the empty hole, but it was full of his own leaked lubricant. The fluid was meant to ease the friction between metal parts. His fingers slid right back out of the hole.

Both the Seeker's black hands, one more uncoordinated than the other, grabbed empty air as the Autobot's hand stopped. He kept going. Now he was above the seam, reaching hopelessly for it, and gravity gave way to an abrupt weightlessness as he reached the peak of the launch. Downward force would reassert itself soon, in seconds, and Thundercracker couldn't fly. He could see the Autobot's palm, he was reaching toward it, but underneath his feet was nothing but open air. Open air and, very far below, hard and unforgiving ground.

Gravity began to ease its cruel force down on him again.

_Holy Primus - Holy Primus, deliver us, deliver me..!_

His damaged hand flailed, but his other hand slapped into the barely-there hole in passing as he began to go _down_. The lube slipped it right back out again - except for a tiny catch, a snare, an edge where the plating caught on a broken joint.

It was a grip of a mere moment, slipping even as it caught, but warriors had reflexes honed in battle. The Decepticon's whole body heaved.

Metal _clink_ed, lost in the rush of air as his last finger slipped free, but it had been enough.

Less than a klik ago, the Autobot's massive hand had been the most frightening thing in Thundercracker's world. Now it was the most beautiful thing he'd ever landed on. He hit and rolled, scooting like crazy the second his aft hit metal. His offline thrusters struck sparks as they scraped in a windmill scramble, and still they just barely managed to push him to safety.

He wasn't sure he could stand even if he wanted to. Which he did not. The Seeker scooted until he was up the gentle incline of the palm's edge, then turned over and crawled in an undignified scurry away from the edge. He couldn't so much as pretend he gave a drone's hull about how he looked right now. His shoulders hunched, and his wings tucked close to prevent the high-altitude winds from pulling him even near that terrible drop-off. Standing upright was really not a priority right now. His processors were scattered in every direction, databanks randomly opening files and sending the organization into chaos as subdirectories became endless loops within his head. It felt like his central units were on fire, they were spinning data so fast.

**Access denied. Access denied. Access denied.**

The Seeker stopped where he was. He crouched in the center of a titan's hand, shivering violently, and began the long process of collecting his scattered wits.

Wind pulled at him, whistling, but the jerk of panic with every tug was slowly subsiding. The hand was so large he couldn't see over the edges once he was in the center, and that was…good. Thundercracker swallowed the bitter taste of fear and let it begin to digest. He'd been shot down before, although not from this height. The tube-deep fear that'd seized him was a perfectly natural reaction to nearly becoming a messy splatter on the ground far below. Now, however, just like after a near-miss or actual crash, he was starting to deal with it.

He sat back slightly, but he was far too tense to relax out of the threatened crouch he'd adopted. He needed a moment. Just a klik. He needed to let his overstressed systems stabilize, and then he could deal with whatever else the universe flung at him. He could. The fear was processing, dying down as logic reclaimed his CPU.

Thundercracker flinched as the wind pushed at his wing. He lifted his head enough to cast a wary glance toward the closest drop-off and scooted a bit further away. Logic dictated a healthy dose of precaution at the moment. No flight systems meant no margin for error(2), and his balance was none too good with everything that'd been done to him in the last cycle. He'd be staying away from the edge for a while, yeah? Yeah.

**Access denied.**

His optical lenses flared wide as fear twisted to anger. He wasn't going to go through that again. And unless Ratchet was hanging off a finger, there was no one up here to stop him from undoing the hacks that'd cut off his external relay controls.

**Command order: Central processor unit: Access root.**

**CPU root: Access granted.**

His HUD abruptly bisected, bright red warnings and visual input on one half and his internal computer control's main menu on the other. Thundercracker clenched his hands into fists and tightened them until his damaged left hand screamed pain and his right hand's knuckle joints creaked. He held them that way until the shaking subsided. One way or another, he was going to regain some control of this situation!

**Command order: CPU root: Access flight system root.**

**CPU root: Access granted.**

The menu clicked over, flicking through the screens until it stopped in the right processor's root menu. The flight system's checklist that had been consistently denying him access this whole time scrolled up, and behind each item listed the reason why. Thundercracker's fists tightened that one iota further, and something cracked and dripped fluid from his wrist. _Ratchet. I will murder you, and I'm going to make it hurt. _ Thundercracker was the primary user of his own systems, for obvious reasons, but not of these ones. The sadistic Autobot medic had hacked the external relays so thoroughly they came up in Thundercracker's registry as belonging to someone else. Although, surprisingly, the new primary user permit didn't have Ratchet's username.

_Who's Metroplex?_

…no matter. He didn't have time to puzzle over the insane medics eccentric whims.

**Command order: flight system software: profile.**

**Flight system software: profile: Access granted. **

**Command order: flight system hardware test. **

**Flight system hardware test: Start test: Y/N?**

**Yes.**

**Flight system hardware: Access denied.**

** -Error warning: primary user authorization required.**

_Oh, I know. Trust me, I fragging well know that._ **Primary user: log software: profile.**

**Primary user profile: input authorization password.**

_Why bother? I know I don't have it_. **Authorization password entry: "Smelt yourself, Ratchet."**

**Primary user profile: Access denied. Ah, ah, ah! What's the magic word?**

But here, deep in his securely-firewalled computer, the external relays had to link up. That gave Thundercracker's primary user access an edge over a temporary hack, because device managers had to balance external hardware with internal software. Without the hacker there verifying the new primary user codes, that let him bring up the option menu on the relays, slip through Ratchet's sadistic little code-game, and…_yes._

**Command order: device manager: options: user accounts: verify user permits.**

**Device manager: options: user accounts: start verification process: Y/N?**

**Yes.**

Something fierce and triumphant ignited like thermite under Thundercracker's spark, and he smirked at the hands he'd braced himself on. His optics were just slightly unfocused as his HUD split again to show a status bar. The verification process had started, meaning his own processors were riffling through themselves as a deep scan began. Without Ratchet there actively blocking him, that scan would bring his estranged relays back under the correct primary user permits. In a matter of a breem, the Seeker would regain system control!

In the meantime, however, there was the small matter of, well. Yes. Someone who wasn't so small.

He slowly lifted his head, forcing himself to confront the terror head-on. He'd taken the hit and recovered before crashing. Time to stabilize and plot a new assault course on the battlefield.

There was no way to take in what he saw at first. There was a wall of yellow-green metal that could rival the Constructicons' for vivid coloration. He'd never seen an Autobot or even a facility wall colored that brilliantly. He'd thought the _Ark_'s orange interior was absurd, but this?

'This' was distracting him from the fact that the wall wasn't a wall. It was a upper chest plate, one of many that made of an entire shoulder array the size of a major artillery platform. Including the artillery, because those were some extremely large cannons mounted on that shoulder over there. There, in that direction. To the left of the Decepticon-purple Autobot insignia glaring at him from front and center. Thundercracker had never seen such the Autobot faction sign look so menacing, and above it…behind it…

He looked up. And up.

The wide, squared blue visor wasn't a surprise. The very ground around him had been tinted blue by the vast glow of that visor when he'd first tumbled out of the space bridge with his wingmates. More surprising was the blocky helm with its purple - what, smoke stacks? Those looked like factory exhaust vent chimneys, but that was ridiculous, because in order to incorporate that, the Autobot would have to transform intosomething the size of an industrial complex. The Seeker stared up at the face drawing closer, close enough to erase the sky, and had the sinking feeling that the size scale for that transformation sounded about right. Whatever this Autobot transformed into, it was huge. There seemed to be layers built into the brilliantly-colored chestplate, too, although Thundercracker couldn't make them out clearly. He couldn't drag his optics away from the approaching grim-lined face long enough to get a better look, but there seemed to be multiple floors - complete with windows and exterior access points! - built into the right side block.

'Block' was the right word, actually. He'd seen building blocks smaller than that. Maybe he wasn't seeing one building. Maybe the mech really was a whole complex. There were _staircases_ running up the outside of those cannons! Was the Autobot a mobile munitions factory? An armament or a forge, or maybe both? What factory complex could possibly be _this_ gigantic? An ore processing station combined with manufacturing facilities? Complete with equipment and raw material storage, and when he tore his optics away long enough for a glimpse through one of the windows, he saw what looked like personnel bunkers.

Things shifted in Thundercracker's head, boxes of pre-assembled thought breaking apart as assumptions came to pieces at the seams. The Autobot…transformed into…was that _possible?_ Could a mech the size of a base exist? There'd been rumors of city mobilization in the early phases of the war, but the Decepticons had discarded living assault platform and structural mech projects in favor of drones when the Autobots had turned to guerilla warfare. Property damage had mounted rapidly for the Decepticons, and when the property was a living mech, damage got expensive in terms of both finances and moral. At least inanimate metal and drones could be rebuilt by whatever grunt soldiers were on hand to pick up a welding torch. Decepticon medics got taken out by snipers with depressing frequency when they ventured out of the medbays(3).

Thundercracker looked up and held onto his composure with every iota of hard-won stubborn dignity. He hadn't come through the atrocities of war to shake himself to bits because a cityformer was studying him like a scientist with a bug under a microscope.

Sound waves pulsed against his armor, an audible and airy pressure. "Thundercracker."

He rocked on his knees under the force of it, fists clenching against the giant hand he crouched on. The sound of his own name boomed across him, almost attacking his audios with the sheer power and volume of a vocalizer that was quite clearly _whispering_. Thank Primus for small favors, and try not to think about the implications of that. If the volume upped even a little…

The scientist knew the bug's name. How the frag did this monster know his name?! "Yes," he said cautiously, hoping the neutral answer would either act as agreement that, yes, that was his name, or ask what in the Pit this 'bot wanted with him.

The optical lenses behind the visor whirled, and Thundercracker had to squint against the dizzy lightshow. The status bar stood out against the blue light. **Access denied.**

"Be still," that voice resonated deep within his chassis, and the Seeker frowned, puzzled.

Then something else stood out against the blue light, and his frown became a shocked gape. "No, wait - !" He went straight from a defensive crouch to a frantic scurry, but too little, too late. The massive thumb folded over and came down, and an implacable weight pinned Thundercracker by one useless thruster. He kicked and went absolutely nowhere. "Stop!"

"Cease struggling."

Since there was nothing else he could really do, and because the helm-rattling voice knocked the instinctive fear back a step, he obeyed. Thundercracker lay sprawled on his side, pinned by one thruster, and looked up over his shoulder with wide red optics. The blue visor continued to stare down; the gray face kept its grim lines. The Autobot simply studied him. The Seeker couldn't tell what, if anything, he thought about what he saw. The Decepticon stared back, fascinated and terrified.

The seconds slowed as Thundercracker came down from the surge of hyper-aware fear. Awareness trickled in around the edges of his mind, filling in slowly to become actual thought again.

The thumb on his thruster held him down, but no more than that. He darted a look at it, licking his bottom lip nervously as he took in just how tiny his leg looked underneath the slab of the Autobot's thumb. Yet the pressure applied was firm enough to pin him, not enough to dent his lower leg. When the hand raised further, the dregs of fuel in his tanks sloshed nauseatingly, but no further pressure came despite how Thundercracker flinched in anticipation of crushing pain. The amount of precise calibration gauging that miniscule amount of pressure required for a mech this big boggled the mind.

He onlined his optics again to find that the face had drawn closer. The sounds of a living mech surrounded him. It was a bizarre sensation. Fuel pumps thumped beneath his hip and elbow. The smaller busywork of pistons and gears hummed against the thinner plating of his wings. The billow and rush of an impossibly large ventilation system washed over him in rhythmic cycles. Being inside Astrotrain wasn't this loud!

Weight shifted, and the thumb rolled his thruster until his hip straightened. It moved him onto his back by manipulating his limb. Thundercracker warily sat up, glancing between his trapped leg and the impassive face observing him. The circular whirl of optical sensors _whirr-click_ed. He felt like some kind of toy being inspected before purchase. The status bar ticked upward on one side of his HUD, steadily verifying his primary user codes. Already, he had target-lock back. It didn't exactly help him right now, but at least he had it. He defiantly brought it up and searched the vast visor for a weak point, the shatter point. Targeting systems blipped, scanning.

On the other side of his HUD, self-repair updated his fuel gauge. Oh, joy. His dislocated wrist and stripped fingers had depleted already meager reserves down to give him little over a breem. Nine minutes and counting. As if this wasn't fun enough, he was going to lapse into fuel-starved statis right here! The behemoth would probably drop him and give the broken scrap of his body to Ratchet! _Fantastic_.

"Thundercracker."

What he wouldn't give to snap, "What?" back at this mech. Instead, he swallowed down the fuel pump that tried to jump up into his throat and nodded acknowledgment.

The thumb rose. "Stand up."

What else could he do but obey? Feeling shaky and violently angry in turns, Thundercracker slowly bent his legs until he could roll up to his knees and clamper to his feet. Emotional equilibrium was returning to him as slowly as control over his external relay systems. He stood at loose attention, chin up and gaze as level as he could make it. The effect was somewhat lacking in that it was hard to meet someone's optics when each individual sensor was half his height.

Those sensors inspected him. The huge head tilted to one side, taking in the tiny Seeker at a slightly different angle. Thundercracker staggered before recovering his balance as the hand he stood on moved. "Arms out."

He hesitated for a long moment. Seriously?

Obedience came grudgingly this time. Thundercracker cycled his vents and lifted his arms, deciding to treat it as if this were surrender. Open palms showed he carried no weapons, and arms bent at the elbows showed that his arm-mounted weaponry was missing. He'd been disarmed, see?

Again, the head-tilt and prolonged study. If he didn't know any better, the Seeker would have thought the cityformer was outright enthralled by him. There was no sign of interest or approval on the gray face, however, and being studied this closely made Thundercracker's hands close into tension-tight fists as it went on and on.

"Turn around."

"What?" It got out before he could stifle himself, but fortunately, indignant shock flattened his tone down to a blank query instead of a scoff of disbelief. The resultant rumble of displeasure still jiggled his joints in their sockets, which reminded him rather viscerally that he was a powerless doll in this mech's hands. It felt like the tied-off ends of his fuel tubes were jostling about inside his torso. "Uh."

The status bar closed quietly, and he ran through the command code checklist on automatic.

**Access granted.**

**Access granted.**

**Access granted.**

But right behind system access:

**Danger: low fuel. **

**Warning: statis lock imminent. **

**Proximity alert.**

His engine turned over once, thrusters grinding, before a new alert popped up in his flight system to stall his engine before it properly started.

**Warning: insufficient fuel.**

Frag. His. _Life_.

His external relays all pinged back the same slagging messages. Ratchet's code-hacks were undone, but Thundercracker had no option but to obey the humiliating order like a good prisoner. It stung his pride, however, turning in place with his arms still raised high in surrender. Look at him being compliant. A harmless and complaint Decepticon obeying the deadly Autobot.

That was so backward he didn't know what to think, and over all his thoughts ran the blazing red words telling him what he already knew: six minutes until statis.

Considering what had happened only breems earlier on the ground to fuel him up enough to make it until now, he was almost afraid the Autobot wouldn't let him drop offline. But it wasn't like he had a choice. No matter how far Thundercracker had fallen, from warrior to toy, there was still further he could fall.

The ground was such a long way down, after all.

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><p><strong>[* * *]<strong>

**Footnotes**

**[* * *]**

* * *

><p>(1)Although flapping his arms was indeed on his last-ditch attempt list. The Decepticon flyers' mass reaction upon meeting Earth's avian population had been somewhere between fascination and complete inability to comprehend. The idea of beating wings to accomplish lift was a distinctly organic evolution. More than that, it was an Earth evolution. Oh, sure, xenobiologists before the war had encountered and studied alien species that used skin and scales in similar ways, but feathers? While rotors weren't a new concept, vertical up and down movements of wings was. Laserbeak and Buzzsaw could occasionally be seen in the common rooms, trying to achieve lift by beating their metallic imitation-feathered wings while a crowd of spellbound jets looked on.<p>

There was just something enchantingly cute about birds flapping their little wings. Blitzwing actually went and bought an African grey parrot off of one of Octane's human buddies, giving in to the deceptively innocent desire to watch the tiny thing flit and flutter about. The rare times he allowed the other flyers near it was both awesome - really, it was adorable - and an endurance test. It was _D'aww!_-worthy when it perched on someone's finger and preened, but then it started squawking. In a fit of either brilliance or devilry, Blitzwing had taught it to mimic his favorite football coach's best plays…

(2)Skywarp was an exception to this rule, as he often was for most. Skywarp _was_ the error in the majority of cases.

(3)Skywarp's iatrophobia had some basis in truth. At this point in the war, only the strong and exceptionally sneaky Decepticon medical personnel had survived, and they were feared. If they were out to get a certain Decepticon, that Decepticon had best beware. Medics were _the_ Special Forces of the faction. All kinds of special, the medics were.


	8. Pt 7

**Warning:** **Read this fic at your own risk. All previous warnings apply.**

_It is not necessary to read the _Footnotes_ series to understand this fic, but it is set in the same universe. Some of the world-building is involved._

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><p><strong>[* * * * *]<strong>

* * *

><p><strong>AN:** _From TFWiki –_

_joor = 6 hours_

_cycle = 1.25 hours_

_breem = 8.3 minutes_

_klik = 1.2 minutes_

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><p><strong>[* * * * *]<strong>

**7**

**[* * * * *]**

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><p>He turned full circle and looked up at the titan. The massive face's expression hadn't changed.<p>

"Turn."

His teeth gritted together so hard the grade-sensors on the impact surfaces squealed. What was this, the Thundercracker Show? What was next, a circus master and jumping through flaming hoops? He turned again.

"Stop."

He froze on command, facing the open sky. Okay. Well, this he didn't like. Even less than before, that was. Facing _away_ from the Autobot was even worse than facing toward him. His wings positively crawled as lidar and radar pinged for all they were worth, trying to track the movement of the mountainous mech behind him. A shiver tried to worm its way down his back. Locked joints and stiffened struts kept the movement confined to his wing flaps and an uneasy flexing of internal gaskets, but the march of insect-feet jitters continued through his wires most unpleasantly. He really, really didn't like not being able to see what might come at him next.

His head turned slightly, letting his peripheral vision keep at least one huge yellow-green shoulder in sight. Slate-gray face, red hands, brilliant yellow-green armor, and purple accents; the mech who'd decided on this color scheme had been shot, if there were any justice in the universe. At least Thundercracker could see all of the Autobot's fingers this way. The red stood out quite well.

On this hand, anyway. A ridiculously huge shift on his radar had his arms dropping and head whipping around -

"Stop. Face forward."

The order came with more force than the ones previously, and the Seeker bit off a surprised curse as his armor rattled so hard under the sound waves it sent him staggering. It nearly took his knees out from under him as different metal densities caused the joints to vibrate and slip in their sockets.

That was more of a reminder than he needed about who exactly was in control here.

"Alright, already," he hissed in a very low voice. "I get it." He stiffly straightened up. After a second of internal debate, he raised his hands back up from the combat stance he'd almost fallen into. He preferred to not endure that order being repeated.

The tingly feeling prickling across his wings and cockpit reflected how hard they'd been shaken by the abrupt sonic bath. The feeling wasn't one he wanted to dwell on. Under normal circumstances, the odd sensation would almost be one he'd enjoy. Soundwave had figured that one out well enough, but Thundercracker's reaction to the Decepticon Communications Officer attempting to inflict it on him had been the same as his reaction now: _Do Not Want._

The movement on his radar became a shadow cast across the metal around him. The urge to flinch in dread coiled at the base of his spark casing, but if the hand hovering over him was going to smash him to a metal splotch, it'd do it while the Seeker stood tall and proud. Thundercracker was going to face his end with whatever scraps of dignity he had left. He'd long ago resolved to not be Starscream, cowering before execution.

His vocalizer seized in his throat, manually locked down as words tried to tumble out, because Starscream's groveling had saved his miserable life how many times? The blue Seeker swallowed frantically and hoped death would come before he reneged on that resolution. Or not at all. Death not coming at all would be nice.

A touch so light it almost didn't exist ran across the back of his wings. Yet that was more than enough. The sweep of metal-on-metal was as wide as his wingspan, and the vast system resonance behind the plating thrummed into the Decepticon's smaller systems in a deluge of vibrations, sound, and residual energy. Something that large couldn't help but bleed electricity off the circuitry packed underneath, and Thundercracker arched as electromagnetic energy and throbbing sensation cascaded through his body. He caught a glimpse of the single red finger returning, approaching the top of his helm again, and then his body turned into a quivering conduit. Charge zapped from the gentle tap on his helm, oscillated down his wings, scraped lightly across his aft, and stroked the back of his legs.

"Nnnuhn!" Had that noise come from him? His legs tried to buckle as the finger returned a third time, filling his body with foreign resonance once more. Internal structures and external plating buzzed and followed the very edge of the finger touching him, sensors in total upset until the energy and vibration grounded back out through his feet into the hand he stood on. "Hhhnn."

Thundercracker clamped down on his vocalizer to stop the undignified spats of static trying to blurt out with every judder through him in time with the rapid pulse of the Autobot's gears and pistons. The fourth touch wasn't so shocking. It was like…dipping in and out of an ion storm, except there was no adjustment period for the energy impact. And the purely physical impact shimmied pieces of him that he hadn't even known could tremble. Immersion happened as suddenly as a lightning strike and disappeared again just as quickly, like he was flipping back and forth between planetary atmospheres.

He knew that feeling, although it'd never been quite so _tactile_ as this. Skywarp's teleportation technology encompassed more than just a warp drive installation. Skywarp was the only mech Thundercracker knew of who could shift locations without suffering disorientation from the external input changing, no matter how crazily different the input was.

The Seeker braced himself against the finger's stroking touch down his back, and his arms sagged loosely out to the sides as his focus narrowed inward to his sensor network. The Autobot was so unbelievably large that the tiny Decepticon's body had to react. However, now he knew what the problem was. His sensors were fighting instead of channeling the onslaught of circuit-shaking energy that poured through him. Nobody could have been Skywarp's wingmate this long and not worked out how to quickly sort out a sudden influx of new input as circumstances changed in the beat of a fuel pump. Acting as a vessel between two sources of input was odd and felt - strange. But. Thundercracker could deal with this.

The brush of metal down his back happened a fifth time, and although the Seeker wobbled a bit under the purring smack of sensation, it didn't threaten to send him to his knees. What it did do was enrage him. His lips peeled back in a furious snarl, and red optics lit hellishly hot. The arms that had drooped snapped up, rigid, and even his damaged hand clenched into a tense fist.

The Pit-slag Autobot was _petting_ him!

"Do you understand your situation."

It took locking down his vocalizer yet again to prevent an involuntary, wavering, high-pitched noise of - of something he'd rather not say from escaping his vocalizer. The mech did nothing but whisper, and the sound still poured ripples of shaking sound through Thundercracker's body. Seething rage became shuddering, blank reaction for a single moment, and the Seeker's back arched away from the fingertip covering it. White lines _fitz_ed across his vision.

When they disappeared at the end of the giant's sentence, he found that his shoulders had loosened and dropped his arms down again, and his hands were limply hanging. His intakes had stopped under the sonic flood, and he had to absently reboot his ventilation system to get his fans working when a heat warning popped up. For a good two seconds, rebooting was all he _could_ do. It took the finger nudging him - incredibly gentle, how could a mech that size judge that kind of pressure correctly? - to skip his wandering processors back from _how_ to _what_ had actually been said.

The words didn't make sense at first. It took him a few more seconds just to comprehend that the tone was meant to imply a question. That voice had rung his body like a well-tuned bell, and trying to decipher the resonating tones left him blinking dumbly at the sky. Situation? What?

The red numbers on his HUD flickered as another digit changed, counting down, and Thundercracker abruptly shook himself like he'd been dowsed in acid.

The situation? The situation was spark-fragging _bad_, that's what it was. There was a gaping hole where his fuel processing plant and tanks had been. His remaining fuel tank was alarmingly low and dropping lower by the klik as self-repair and regular functioning drew ruthlessly on the few drops of remaining energon. He'd drop into statis in less than three minutes, and only then would his body begin siphoning from the separate storage tank feeding his spark integration mechanisms and lasercore. But even that wouldn't keep him alive for much longer. The higher grade of energon stored in that tank would keep him functioning, but it was an emergency resort. Once that particular tank emptied, deactivation came swiftly.

Even pushing aside the fact that his tank was ringing empty, the fact of the matter was that Thundercracker was dead slag no matter what. His secondary tank had advanced processing equipment meant to handle humankind's foul petroleum products, but that wasn't the same as an actual refinery. He could function off the energon manufactured by that tank, but the amount of energy burnt in the process made anything but low grade a poor trade. If he was willing to override his internal equipment enough, he could theoretically force that tank to produce midgrade. It would take a very long time, however, and his processing plant would suck up more energy than it converted.

The thing was only meant for emergency use. Becoming his primary - and only - fuel processing plant was a task it had never been intended to take on. On a long enough timeline, it would fail from overwork. On a shorter timeline, the Seeker it powered would go offline before that became a problem.

The secondary tank was a tough little installation from the Constructicons, but it couldn't turn crude fuels into the purest grade energon necessary to feed a lasercore or spark integration hardware. That was impossible for the small machine. Which meant Thundercracker's most vital systems were running off of what he currently had in his tank. He had no backups or reservoirs; Ratchet had physically removed them. When he dropped into statis, his body would start feeding from his remaining tank, and even if he could intake midgrade energon right then, there wouldn't be enough time for his smallest, slowest tank to refine it into the grade necessary for his vital systems. It'd try because his statis protocols would register the drop in the vital systems tank and demand the attempt, but the refinement process would just burn the energy before he could use it.

Ratchet's hack-job surgery had sent Thundercracker's whole body into a self-perpetuating downward spiral.

"I…" Rage bleached into something flimsier, bleaker. The Seeker stared into the sky he faced and watched the red numbers count down. He understood his situation, all right. He understood that he was going to die, slow and starving, without even feeling the end coming once he dropped into statis lock. "Yes." His head shook helplessly, denying it even as he said it, and he flinched away from the fingertip on his back. His hands dropped to his sides. It seemed rather pointless to keep them up any longer, and despair dragged at his shoulders, too. "But…why are you doing this?"

That was the part he didn't understand. Autobots being randomly cruel made no sense, and he couldn't help but feel that he was missing something important. There was a chunk of information he wasn't seeing, no matter how he twisted the facts around to stare at them. Ratchet's odd paintjob had almost been as bewildering as what he'd said while pulling Thundercracker apart, and the drones' brief insights had led nowhere. They were still on Earth, at least so far as he could tell. How had things changed so dramatically between space bridge jumps? An insane Chief Medical Officer, fine, Thundercracker could see why the Autobots would go to great lengths to keep that hidden - but how could they have possibly managed to hide an Autobot the size of a _city_ on _Earth_, of all places? The mech was standing right out in the open, for Primus' sake!

Unless…

"You are mine." The simple statement, answer and explanation, saturated the tiny Decepticon with an inundation of sound that rattled him no less than the realization sweeping full-blown from the back of his head where a hundred puzzle-piece facts had been clicking into alignment.

A medic more casual sadistic torturer than professional doctor. Drones made from once-living Autobots.

The weird, backhanded references to a Prime who sounded nothing like the Optimus Prime Thundercracker knew. Optimus could be fearsome, but not in the way he'd been referred to.

A cityformer Autobot standing out in the open, treating a prisoner of war like a personal toy.

_This wasn't his world._

Not Cybertron, but not Earth. Not the Earth that he knew, anyway, and that thought smashed back through the breems leading to this moment, rearranging Thundercracker's perspective with a sledgehammer. How could the Autobots have concealed a cityformer, on or off Earth? The answer was that they couldn't have. How had Ratchet changed his paintjob so quickly? He hadn't. Why would the Prime be feared? Because he wasn't the Prime, not the Prime Thundercracker shot at in battle, and his head _hurt_ to think that.

Why would an Autobot treat a prisoner of war like this? Because he was no Autobot.

He knew there were Decepticons who saw Autobot prisoners as nothing but scrap metal waiting to happen, and the careless, simple three-word reason offered for Ratchet's brutal surgery and the drones' ruthless infliction of pain had sickening overtones of that attitude. Despite how the Decepticon struggled to wrap his head around the concept, the stark truth slammed into his processor. This Autobot wasn't an Autobot, not an Autobot as Thundercracker knew the faction, and that eliminated a fundamental assumption he'd held all along. This titan was under none of the moral stipulations of the Autobot Code(1).

Instead of asking why an Autobot would bring a Decepticon to the brink of statis, the question was what a mech like this wanted with a prisoner.

The situation abruptly skewed one step to the left and down, yet nothing had moved. The finger at his back remained still, just barely touching him. His head jerked, struck between the optics by horrorstruck realization. Those optics flicked from side to side as it hit him what exactly had been done to him, and the finger - the drones. The nauseating refuel session. The _petting_.

What did a giant mech like this want?

A Primus-fragged, glitching _toy_.

The high grade for his vital systems would have to be supplied by an outside source, already processed, as well as high enough grade energon to allow his secondary tank processing time for the grades his other systems needed. This…Autobot, for lack of a better designation, had already used his drones to provide the processed fuel Thundercracker now required. Because of his missing tanks, however, the amount of pre-processed fuel Thundercracker now required to function normally was too great for a regular mech to supply. Even Astrotrain or a combiner team might have difficulty doing so for more than a few orns. But a mech this size wouldn't have that problem, now would he?

The words emerged as a strangled whisper: "You've made me dependent. On you."

"Yes." So simple, so terribly simple, through the optics of mech who didn't see the tiny 'bots around him as real. "You are mine."

He hated how the sonic vibrations made his systems heat even as chill horror swelled up through him. His HUD countdown continued, and Thundercracker forced the words out. Because this plan had been well-thought out beforehand to force this very connection. "You'll refuel me?" His voice came out level, saying the question as a statement. He already knew.

"Yes."

And here was the part that turned churning, boiling hatred and rage into cold, bitter fear. "…if."

"Yes."

He wasn't a drone, wasn't a toy, but from the perspective of someone holding this sick kind of power over him, he was whatever that mech desired him to be. Starscream was the one who panicked and threw his pride to the wind far too easily according to the rest of the Decepticons, but the truth was that they'd all beg for their lives when driven to it. It was just a matter of finding sufficient leverage to drive them to that point.

The red countdown in Thundercracker's vision had him on the brink.

He didn't want to die.

The only way to survive was to cooperate, was to bend before this monster's will and act the part of a pet. His jaw ached, he held it so tense. The part of his jaw structure the drone had deformed hurt, but the amount of pressure between his upper and lower dental moulds right now could warp titanium. He did not want to agree to this. The last thing he wanted was to cooperate with whatever revolting solution had been planned for this deliberate series of problems constructed for him. Yet he _did not_ want to die.

The effort it took to pry open his own jaw caused it to creak. "Fine."

Sound shook him to the core, and it was amused. "Say it."

Because where was the fun of having a sentient doll if it didn't know it'd been reduced to being a doll? "Yes," Thundercracker spat, "I understand." He understood that he was dependent on this mech to keep him alive. He understood that his fuel system had been all but slaved over to someone else. Oh, he understood.

Air burst around him hard enough to push him a step forward. It might have been his imagination, but he doubted that'd been just a wind gust. A sigh of satisfaction from the titan's vents was far more likely, given his luck. "Say it."

The numbers counted down as rapidly as his desperation grew, but that still made him half-turn in puzzlement. "What?"

The massive gray face finally held an expression, and it made Thundercracker deeply uneasy. That look couldn't be described, perhaps because anyone who saw it would recoil and turn away before attempting to attach words to it. "You are mine," the Autobot repeated, and the possessive note in the booming bass voice enveloped the Seeker.

It took a moment for Thundercracker to shake himself from the thrumming of his body and catch on to what the repetition implied. "You're **joking**," he exclaimed, optics wide. For some reason, that was the last straw. Maim him, yes, and tame him by force. He was a Decepticon prisoner, so maybe there was some logic in that, even if not applied to these particular methods. But _slag _the Autobot_ to the Pit_, this was nothing but unadulterated humiliation!

Every word tasted of defeat, and if that seemed melodramatic, then obviously nobody else knew that defeat was tar-black and cloying, lingering and burning like melted sugar pouring smoke and sticky sludge down his throat until it suffused every system with its revolting, inescapable flavor. "I am - " He gagged on the last word but grated it out in one bitter syllable, " - yours."

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><p><strong>[* * *]<strong>

**Footnotes**

**[* * *]**

* * *

><p>(1)Also not the Decepticon Code, but that was kind of a given considering the mech was the size of a mountain. Not even Megatron would try to enforce the rulebook on someone who overpowered him on this scale. Unwritten Rule #2: <em>Might makes right.<em> Megatron himself would probably take one look at a mech like this abusing a prisoner, shrug, and write the prisoner off as a loss.

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><p><em>AN: Major source of motivation was finding out the original requester was still following this thing. Secondary push to finish quickly was Shibara deciding she wanted to illustrate a part. Because she's awesome like that. _

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><p>[* * * * *]<p>

** "Pet" by Shibara can be found on Ao3**

[* * * * *]


	9. Pt 8

**Warning:** **Read this fic at your own risk. All previous warnings apply.**

_It is not necessary to read the _Footnotes_ series to understand this fic, but it is set in the same universe. Some of the world-building is involved._

* * *

><p><strong>[* * * * *]<strong>

* * *

><p><strong>AN:** _From TFWiki –_

_joor = 6 hours_

_cycle = 1.25 hours_

_breem = 8.3 minutes_

_klik = 1.2 minutes_

* * *

><p><strong>[* * * * *]<strong>

**8**

**[* * * * *]**

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><p>The hand moved, a possessive curl of the fingers around a brand-new toy, and air gusted across it again as the gigantic mech brought his hand closer to his face as if to look closer yet. Such a tiny toy to play with.<p>

Thundercracker's fists shook. An intense feeling of satisfaction emanated from the Autobot and crawled over his plating in waves of sound, air, and energy. Part of it was the incensed Seeker's mind imagining the mech's thoughts, but they weren't that hard to figure out in reality. The air itself reflected smug self-satisfaction.

The finger at his back prodded him lightly, for no more reason than it amused the titan, and blue shoulders hunched to sullenly protect his head between his air intakes. As if that would help? This was all a game, and he was a game piece manipulated by the player. He was helpless to stop whatever playing was planned. His damaged wrist creaked as the shaking spread, but the pain from his fingers still couldn't distract him from the magma boil of hatred welling up in his tanks. Making him acknowledge his…status…had burnt the shame deep as a brand, and rage smoked from the fresh wound.

"Thundercracker."

He did _not_ want to answer. He did anyway, because sulking would do him no good when red numbers were counting down toward zero. Statis lock and inevitable death trumped offended dignity every time, and hope was a persistent slagger. "What."

The hand moved again, but this time the plating under actually shifted about. The Seeker staggered in surprise as the metal under his feet moved. Hydraulics hissed, and steam suddenly released into the cool upper atmosphere when two thick sections of armor plating drew apart right at his feet. The subtle pounding of engine pistons became a jackhammer as red armor parted, no longer muffling the noise. A mech this size was run by mechanisms more commonly seen in industrial factories, and revealing them brought the noise up to an almost unbearable pitch.

Disconcerted, Thundercracker took two quick steps back away from the gap. He also took the opportunity to turn enough that he could see the giant's face again. The expression hadn't changed from that possessive, pleased look that continued to make his spark urgently flutter like a bird searching for escape.

The finger on his back moved with him as he turned. Too late to step away, Thundercracker found himself half in the crook of the digit's first knuckle. That was monumentally uncomfortable, and more so because the Autobot bent his finger to make the corner even deeper and therefore harder to get out of.

"Look." The crooked finger ushered him forward. It was very much against his will; the finger segments came up against the back of his wings and forced him step by step toward the hole now open in the broad red palm. "There," the all-pervasive voice urged.

Static filled his vision for a moment, but he shook it away in order to look into the opening. "What are you…oh."

The plating had moved entirely apart, exposing the Autobot's hand structure under the thick surface metal. Far under the surface, an array of colossal tensile cables looked strong enough to crush anything they wrapped around, and they were connected to strutwork made to withstand that kind of strength. The last time Thundercracker had seen girders that size had been on a skyscraper construction site back on Cybertron. The cacophony was similar to that long-ago building site's noise level.

Cables groaned as they tightened, and their fasteners squeaked in turn. The scraping _creeeel_ of cables brushing past each other underlaid the creak of joints in need of oil. They were all stress sounds common to metal beings, but magnified a thousand times beyond that of a regular mech's body. The loudest engine noise chugged from the direction of the wrist joint, which made sense. Thundercracker had minor mobility mechanisms at his major joints that served a similar purpose, but a mech this size had to have proportionally greater support machinery.

Closer to the armor, a glittering mesh of sensor nodes, circuit board arrays, and standard wiring loosely wove into a blanket network. The connection points for where the network linked into or through the armor plating sparkled with live electricity. Where the plating had moved, the woven web was disconnected. It draped down from the sides of the hole, where the unmoved armor plates were still linked up. The loose blanket of mesh covered the bare strutwork underneath like a living robotic skin. Through this 'skin' twined veins of luridly-colored tubes for coolant, lubricant, and energon.

Those energon lines had Thundercracker's full attention. Every one had adjunct fuel pumps attached, pushing the energon out to the minor motors powering the whole hand's motion. They were braced with rings of metal bolting the softer tubes into place against the deeper structure.

Except for one. One tube nearly the diameter of the Seeker's head had been pushed to the surface, just underneath the network mesh. Its brackets gaped open beneath it, bolts loosened and half-screwed back into place for easy retrieval later. Of course. Ratchet hadn't just prepared _Thundercracker_ for this moment, after all.

Suddenly, the drone's inspection of his teeth made a sick kind of sense. It wasn't like he had anything else on him to use for cutting.

"You want me to - " the Decepticon paused and composed himself, because he didn't want to sound as queasy as he felt. When he spoke again, his voice was cool and factual. "I have to bite through the tube and," hunger vanished for a moment under shame because there was no other term that fit, "feed." His tanks gurgled, achingly empty, but scrap metal and _iron_. What sort of mech slurped energon from someone's lines like a primitive vampire?

"Yes," the Autobot rumbled. "Perhaps an alternative refueling method will be set up in the future. Acquiring you," the tone was a verbal caress, gloating and proud and making Thundercracker feel every bit of the Autobot's enjoyment, "required makeshift measures."

"There must have been easier ways to do all of this," the blue flyer hedged uncomfortably. The finger inched him forward despite the tiny _screeep_ of resistance of his thrusters scraping over red plating. "Why bring in R-Ratchet to cripple me?" It was difficult to even assign that sadistic quack the medic's designation now that Thundercracker knew better.

His thoughts spun off in another direction, furiously working that angle. Alright, so the Autobots were insane fraggers with all the worst traits of the gutter trash filling out the Decepticon lower ranks. If that were true, if this _was_ Earth, if Ratchet was still called 'Ratchet' on an Earth that was nothing like the planet Thundercracker knew, then - what? Did the Decepticons exist here? Were they as bizarrely warped as the Autobots seemed to be? Did _he_ exist here? Was this a world of evil doppelgangers?

He didn't know, but he could speculate. Based on the Autobots' actions so far, the logical conclusion was that someone must exist on this planet who could help him. The giant Autobot seemed to be savoring his 'ownership' of the Seeker, but underlying that pride had to be a fear of Thundercracker just flying away. Ratchet had concentrated on crippling him, of course, because the best way to contain a flyer was clipping his wings. Yet Thundercracker's 'owner' wouldn't have had Ratchet tether the Seeker so closely if there wasn't somewhere or someone within a reasonable distance to escape _to_. The extremes the sadistic medic had gone to were simply too large for any other meaning.

Except for the possibility that both Autobots were just _that_ twisted. It was apparently a plausible possibility for these Autobots.

"I believe in individual coercion," this particular twisted Autobot said. Although Thundercracker lost some of the words in the buzzing of his audios, the meaning came through. The finger at his back still pressed him forward, and the Seeker was reluctantly going along with the prodding. He needed the fuel, repulsive as the idea was. "You Decepticons find your strength of courage in teams. Take away the artificial support provided by your teammates, and the real breaking point of a mech is revealed. Your wingmates may provide adequate leverage, but training will be done while divided to insure that your obedience is real. Personal motivation will prove more effective in this than punishment of others."

Right, because this wasn't creepy enough? Thundercracker reset his optics, blinking the juddering sensors back into working order and sorting out what had just been said. It was the most words the behemoth had said yet, and also the freakiest. Not only _what_ had been said, but how.

Meaning aside, the Seeker was truly alarmed because, despite the booming voice and deliberate pace of the words(1), they were organized and fully coherent. Gestalts spoke in fitful spurts, often in slow and incomplete sentences. Their conjoined minds had difficulty processing and agreeing on verbal output(2). These had not been the words of a slow-minded merge. They had been words of cold horror, thought out and sadistic.

Realization dawned on Thundercrackerthat the words had been said in the voice of experience. Experience in breaking mechs, and this insane fragger had him, now. He also had Starscream and Skywarp. Which meant that, in all likelihood, Ratchet was down below somewhere doing to them what had already been done to him. Or had he been the last?

"A warning, Thundercracker," that bass vibration poured the Seeker's name through him, making the words all the more ominous, "your wingmates' continued well-being rests on your behavior, but you are also responsible for your own treatment. Cooperation will bring reward. Defiance will bring consequences."

Except for the volume and surround-sound nature of the voice, the words were less terrifying than the titan probably intended. Thundercracker stumbled that last step to the open gap in the armor, but his face wasn't downcast just to peer at the energon line. He hid his expression by turning his face downward. His optics had narrowed in sudden, racing thought, and his mouth settled into a grim line. The Autobot had just given him a key piece of information. The whole picture was sketchy at best, but it was more than he'd seen a moment ago.

No Autobot - at least the Autobots he knew - would be so foolish as to try and use a Decepticon as leverage against another Decepticon. That was a recipe for failure. Selfishness was a necessity in the Decepticon ranks. Self-sufficiency and the ability to coldly cut off personal connections to other mechs could mean the difference between death or life. Depending on someone else left mechs adrift when that person left, be it because of death or treachery. Independence didn't mean not relying on a mech's unit or friends, but it did mean knowing that they might die or turn on him. Being able to operate when all support was taken away was all-important.

Because reality was that war had no room for kindness or compassion. The wise mech knew better than to commit so much to anyone that betrayal would lead to his own defeat.

In war, only the strong survived. The Autobots had found their strength in groups, leading to pathetic, mewling weaklings dragging down their ranks as the stronger mechs were forced to shelter their parasitic dependents. Megatron had gone the opposite route and based his military structure on fierce independence, instead. He valued strength and discipline, and neither of those traits was purely physical.

Decepticons where Thundercracker was from might hesitate to leave their comrades behind, but living to see another orn was more important than anyone else's life. In Megatron's optics, soldiers who survived instead of needlessly sacrificing themselves for the weak, injured, or captive - well, they were soldiers who lived to fight for him again. Someone not strong enough to save himself was a weak spot in the ranks, easy filled by new cannon-fodder.

Thundercracker had flown with Skywarp and Starscream a long time. Long enough that he'd gone back for Skywarp a couple times and not shot Starscream in the back more than a few. That wasn't a matter of dependence on them to the point of weakness; it was a careful calculation of how training a new wingmate could weaken him. There was always a delicate balance of trust in Decepticon flight wings, but every 'soft' connection always had a mercenary trade-off. Thundercracker's relationship to Skywarp and Starscream could be seen as a complicated tangle of cautious friendship, personal interest, and professional ability. Their attachment to him could be measured in a cost/benefit ratio depending on the situation. If they came out stronger at the end of the equation, Thundercracker knew they'd guard his back. The same could be said for how he regarded them in return.

He'd been accused of sentimentality before by other Decepticons because he seemed to ignore the obvious costs. Skywarp could come off as an empty-headed idiot on a _good_ day, and Starscream never had good days. But Thundercracker just smiled and let everyone think what they wanted. His benefits list for his wingmates was much longer than Skywarp and Starscream might make it appear on the surface(3).

That didn't mean he wouldn't abandon them in order to save his own thrusters.

Thundercracker knelt down on the displaced plating, one knee at a time. He grunted softly as his knee joints trembled hard against the metal. The mechanisms inside the hand were unshielded by plating right here, and the resulting thrum was correspondingly larger. It was enough to chatter his teeth until he clenched them. The ambient charge bleeding off the circuit mesh skittered over his cockpit instrumentation. He braced one hand on the edge of the open plating, clenching his teeth harder as the thrum buzzed up his arm and straight into his head, and used the other to reach down into the gap. It was hard to get a grip on the energon line because of its diameter, but he pulled at it when he did. It bent slightly but was too thick to come up to meet him.

The finger started to nudge his back, and he waved a hand in irritation. "I know," he said gruffly, already lowering himself down.

This was going to be awkward. Humiliating was a given at this point, but in order to reach the tubing, he had to put his helm into the hole. His body wasn't made for this kind of positioning. The blue Seeker laid flat on the Autobot's hand and scooted forward enough to dip his head in. Black hands fumbled for a moment, testing how close to the surface the line could be brought, and he slid forward a meter more. His cockpit was still on red armor, but his head and shoulders were now in the hole. His canopy's pressure sensors complained that he had to balance on it, but what else could he do? He didn't have the best flexibility at mid-torso.

His hands closed around the tube and brought it up to his face, but he hesitated.

The numbers were counting down very fast. He didn't want to die.

His lips flattened into an unhappy frown before they reluctantly parted. His optics shut off, because like the Pit did he want to watch the tube dent and deform as his dental moulds fought to puncture it. Thundercracker bit down, and the red finger that had been prodding him along stroked very, very gently along the tiny Decepticon's body.

Crimson optics lit back online at the intimate touch, and the lips now pressed against the soft tubing peeled back to bare half-buried teeth in an angry snarl. He'd cooperate, Autobot. He'd cooperate, because the red numbers counting down on his HUD were in the single digits now, and he didn't want to die. He was desperate and not about to deny that the pre-processed energon rushing down into his starved tanks felt like salvation. It felt so good, in fact, that he couldn't help but groan and squirm a little as sudden energy influx and intense contact-vibrations sent his whole body humming.

His remaining secondary tank came online instantly, warned by the grade sensors in his teeth that the energon coming down his intake was of a high enough quality that it needed minimal processing before being shunted off to various needy systems. The twelve tanks he should have had for the different grades required for his systems were, for Ratchet-caused reasons, no longer present. The grade quality he was being…fed…would suffice for now, but eventually there would be mechanical errors as systems glitched from improperly processed fuel.

That was a concern for the future, however. In the here and now, his fuel pump had been winding down slowly but surely as the red numbers dropped and fluid pressure declined, but now it came back to full power. Thundercracker's teeth pressed a little deeper into the soft tubing as renewed strength almost rushed through him. Fuel spilled into his mouth and dribbled down his chin from the massive pump pressure beating rhythmically through the Autobot's giant body, and he sucked it down his intakes as fast as it poured in. Every time his intakes paused to pass the energon down, the swallowing pushed another dribble out of the corners of his mouth.

For once, he didn't care about the mess. This refueling was about speed and taking as much as he could, not about appearing dignified. Dignity could be sacrificed, this one time. After all, he was a cooperative prisoner, eager to obey if it'd spare his wingmates. Right?

Oh, he'd cooperate. The Autobot had made one grave mistake in judgment, and Thundercracker had every intention of surviving to take advantage of that mistake.

A pang of what might have been regret shot across his spark, but he hardened himself against it. If the Autobots here assumed that Decepticons were loyal to each other, willing to behave or die for their comrades, then it gave him an opening. Yes, Thundercracker held a kind of affection for his trine. That didn't mean he was going to stand by them through this. He was far too selfish and intent on saving his own metal.

Besides, escape could be easily justified. One of them had to get away to find help, or at least warn the other Decepticons of the danger. It might already be too late to save the victims.

Auxiliary systems that'd been shut down by Ratchet's hacking and surgically-induced low fuel status began coming online. His weapons had been brought online as soon as he'd cleared Ratchet's overrides from his command codes, but things like the auto-feed for his ammunition storage had remained shut down. His radar and lidar had been online the whole time, despite his systems trying to shut them down to conserve energy, but only now did the screens in his cockpit begin flickering online. His HUD flooded with green and blue messages, finally blotting out the red errors and warnings that'd been tormenting him since that medical quack's first override.

He clicked through them quickly, directing his fuel tank to shunt more fuel to his flight engine systems and weapons. He needed those at full power as soon as possible.

And then his communication array lit up like a Christmas display. Internal commlinks snapped from nonfunctional to erratically spitting fitful static. Thundercracker's head actually twitched, anchored only by his mouth's grip on the tubing. Half-skewed program malfunctions from the space bridge pulsated neon colors almost painfully across his HUD, and his onboard computer popped up half a dozen suggested fixes that would require rebooting. He didn't have _time_ for that. Corrupted data still plagued the whole network, and system boards bleated refusals as he automatically flipped through the channels in a search for the encrypted wing channel.

He wouldn't hesitate to leave Starscream in the lurch, but he also wouldn't hesitate to get his wingleader's help! Primus, right now he'd pay credits to borrow some of Starscream's quick planning.

Instead of Starscream, Skywarp screeched onto the short-range Decepticon communications channel in a burst of panicked shrieking.

_*" - get this psycho **away from me**! I repeat, this is Skywarp of the Decepticon Elite! Can anyone hear me?! I've been grounded and need immediate emergency assistance - **Thundercracker**!"*_ Nobody had ever sounded so happy to have Thundercracker's identification code ping onto a channel. _*"Thundercracker, where the **frag** are you? Nevermind,"*_ Skywarp dismissed that for a more important question. _*"Where am **I**?"*_

Skywarp was alive. Captured, it sounded like, but alive! _*"Can you warp?"*_ Thundercracker snapped back, sucking harder on the energon line and forcing the fuel down his throat intakes until the tubes expanded from the pressure. He needed to fill his tank as fast and full as possible!

_*"Do you think I'd still be here if I could?"*_ his wingmate shot back, half frantic and half raging. _*"There's some Ratchet look-alike **crazy-bot** wrist-deep in my chest turning off everything he puts his hands on, Thundercracker! My activation sequence is still up, but my model projection equations are slagged to the Pit and back. Hacker McClanky Crazy-bot here's locked me out of my own fraggin' scanners! I can't get coordinates, and without them, I can't fix the Primus-fragged equations, so - what the glitchspawnrusted **Chevy Novaau**_**urrrgh**_. Bluhhh-uh."*_

Skywarp's end of the channel burbled wetly. It was internal comm.; there was no reason for Skywarp to make a noise that liquid unless that was exactly what he felt right then. That sounded disturbingly familiar, and remembered sensation made Thundercracker's fuel intakes convulse in involuntary sympathy. The fuel in his mouth curdled, almost choking the blue Seeker.

_*"Skywarp?"*_ He remembered the disorientation and sickening lurch as his internals were rearranged, and he sharpened his voice into a knife meant to cut through to Skywarp's ability to stream multiple chains of thought simultaneously. Let part of the black-and-purple Seeker descend into hysteria as Ratchet pulled out his tanks and fuel processing plant. Thundercracker needed to speak with the _rest_ of Skywarp, the part that never stopped spinning data and searching for angles of attack or escape routes. _*"Hey, focus! You need to warp out of there **right now**,"*_ he snapped, _*"before your fuel level drops too low. Are you receiving? Skywarp! Can you hear me?!"*_

Even over internal commlink, his wingmate sounded one step from retching. His speech slurred oddly as his attention split between physical nausea, instinctive panic, and the flash-quick parallel lines of thought only someone with his teleportation-mods could manage. _*"Yyyyeah? Urrg. Thundercra…? Right. Gotta…gotta have coordinates. Send me something. Anyyyy…anything that isn't heeere."*_

Thundercracker twitched his wings away from the finger laying heavy and possessive on top of him. He sent out the broadest ping possible on his weak - that was a relative measurement, because Skywarp's spatial suites were far more advanced - radar and lidar, gathered the assembled data into a concise packet, and sent it over the channel in a matter of moments. _*"Grab me and shut off your optics,"*_ he said grimly. There was no time for Skywarp to be boggled by the huge Autobot holding Thundercracker. _*"I'm going to throw us out into open air. Soon as I do, bring us back to your current position."*_ Skywarp's warp module would log his current coordinates as he left them, or at least Thundercracker hoped so. _*"We need that chop-shop doc alive, Skywarp. We're going to force him to reverse what he did to us."*_ Or cannibalize him for energon and parts.

The energon part, certainly. Two teleport jumps was going to drain Skywarp's stand-by reserves for his module. A third warp to escape the drones and get some distance from the monster Autobot towering above them would probably suck the Seeker's remaining tank dry. It would work, however. Draining the medic might end up being counter-productive for fixing their tanks, but dividing up the grounder's energon would keep them mobile enough to evade capture again. If help were as close as Thundercracker suspected, they just had to keep low to stay off radar, go for distance, and start yelling their heads off for rescue over short-range comms.

Escape was so closer the blue Seeker could _taste_ it.

The data packet was accepted, but Thundercracker's fuel pump stuttered in his chest.

It hadn't been accepted by Skywarp.

The taste in his mouth turned sour so quickly he nearly gagged.

_*"Ah-ha! So **that's** what this mod does,"* _a cheery voice broke onto the channel, _*"A teleportation drive? Huh. Who'd have thought it. Thanks! Y'know, I was trying to figure out what it was..."*_

A broken yelp got through Ratchet's override, but Skywarp's ID dropped off the short-range channel with sudden finality.

Thundercracker's head shot up, spattering fuel as his overfull lines protested the abrupt motion. "Skywarp!" The finger that had been petting him lifted, letting him scramble upright again, and he whipped around to stare up in angry indignation at the gray face filling the sky above him. "What have you done to him?!"

That face seemed vaguely amused by the toy-sized Decepticon's demand. A housecat kitten threatening a full-grown sabertooth tiger might have gotten the same look seconds before being devoured in one bite. "Your wingmate has not been harmed." Thundercracker's jaw sagged a little at that. Obviously, the Autobot was using a definition of 'harm' different than any found in reality! "Ratchet will disable him, as you have been disabled."

"Keep that fraud away from him," Thundercracker hissed, sliding away from the so-superior look being directed down at him. He inched around the open plating. The Autobot brought his head closer in response, a hint of a smile touching one side of his mouth as the intimidated Seeker took two unnerved steps back. "I've done what you told me to do so far! You said my behavior determines how Skywarp is treated - well, I'm cooperating! Leave him alone!" The demands were made in a voice that wavered just slightly, despite the fierce protectiveness spread across Thundercracker's face.

Behind the false bravura turned up toward the Autobot, a warrior's mind went into overdrive. His HUD updated him on operational status and projected fuel levels, taking into consideration the energon he carried between tank and intake. Having his tubes acting as extended reservoirs felt extremely uncomfortable, but it was the best he could do. The calm, deadly calculations of a living war machine ticked through the facts even as he playedup his part for the watching 'bot.

Ratchet hadn't taken out Thundercracker's specialized flight systems; he'd just disabled the obvious access points. The sadist hadn't known what Skywarp's warp module was, either. Apparently, these versions of the Autobots had never seen a teleportation modification before. If that were true, it was a likely bet that they had never encountered Thundercracker's own mods.

_You're going to regret treating me like a pet, Autoscum._

"So long as you cooperate, he will not be harmed," the Autobot agreed, and Thundercracker used the excuse of that rumbling voice to stagger another step backward. "Ratchet will not touch your wingmate beyond the needed changes."

_'Needed,' my aft._

Wind buffeted blue wings, and the tiny Decepticon gave the curved edge of the huge red hand a frightened look. "I…but…" Bitty black hands rose and ran down the Seeker's face, and radar pings made a panicked tattoo off of the massive mech's plating. Under their cover, targeting sights came up as red optics narrowed behind black fingers. "Alright. Just don't hurt him." His voice dropped to a humble whisper. "Please, don't let Ratchet hurt him anymore."

The plea was so quiet the Autobot tipped his audio receiver closer to hear.

In that instant, Thundercracker leapt into the air. His legs kicked forward and up as he twisted through transformation. Where a hunched, fearful prisoner-toy had stood, a F-14 fighter jet plane spun on its axis and angled, thrusters swinging about until target locks gleamed triumphant white. Specialized engines came into position. They went from offline to online so quickly that the wall-sized visor in the Seeker's sights could do nothing more than light bright blue in surprise.

Thundercracker's signature sonic _BOOM!_ slammed home.

It propelled the jet forward even as the Autobot's head reeled back. A fissure _crack_ed through blue glass like an earthquake opening a yawning canyon in the ground, and Thundercracker dove over the edge. Precious fuel burned, spent too quickly as he forced the inadequate grade of energon to ignite in his flight engines, but only speed could save him now. Broad wings caught the air, and he rocketed away, going for distance. Somewhere out there had to be a means of survival!

A roaring bellow of fury rocked him even in flight, and the sky seemed to rip around him. The very air molecules jittered and danced, slipping out from under his wings and slapping him down with the force of the sound waves. "Fraggit!"

Darkness descended, covering him completely. His radar had a split second to shriek information before the shadow became solid. The blue flyer whipped through a hairpin turn, trying to evade, trying to dart free, but there was _another_ shadow coming _up_ from below. Maybe a faster flyer could have slipped through an opening, but not Thundercracker. His frustrated curse became a static-laced cry of terror only moments before the hands clapped closed around him.

Speed became his mortal enemy. Thundercracker transformed, dumping momentum as fast as he could, almost literally clawing at the air to slow down. His thrusters sputtered, trying to fight air pressure enough to direct thrust forward and slow him down. "Stop, slagging stop! Fraaaaag!"

Proximity sensors helpfully blared warnings about the oncoming _wall_ of the Autobot's laced fingers, and the blue Seeker shouted wordless fear. He threw up his arms in pathetic defense, because he was about to become a smear of flaming fluids. His arms were going to be just as junked as the rest of him: a useless bunch of falling wreckage.

Too fast to follow, much less take advantage of, the hands around him opened again. Thundercracker sailed between the fingers, back into blessedly wall-free sky, but he helplessly tumbled in the swirling wake of vast air displacement happening around him. He fell, and there was no time to pull out into recovery.

Effortless and precise, the Autobot plucked the fragile, tiny mech out of the air by one wing.

It might have been the Seeker's own speed. It might have been a misjudgment on the part of the titan, or just because of the way his cumbersome fingers clamped down on an impossibly small piece of the Decepticon. It might have even been deliberate.

Thundercracker flailed and yelled hoarsely as his wing _crushed_. "Stop! **Stop!**" Everything between armor plates blared pain and errors as they flattened and began to tear under the tremendous pressure. "Stop - please, for Primus' sake, stop!"

His struggles weren't even acknowledged. The Autobot lifted his defiant toy up to give him a displeased look. The captured Seeker went very still, hanging at an angle and staring in mute dismay at that expression. It boded ill for him. "That…was a mistake, little flyer."

The Autobot didn't deign to lower his voice this time. Thundercracker's wing bent and crackled as the Decepticon writhed. Red optics flared a pained, fiery orange as each word jarred his processor insensible, hitting it with pounding vibrations of jolting agony.

When the pulses finally ended, Thundercracker raised his head against the throbbing of his cerebral circuitry. The very slots hurt. His limbs twitched, just slightly, and insides of his hands buzzed numb. Fuel drooled out of the corner of his mouth in a steady drip of pink. His secondary tank had forced up his remaining energon in a pressure purge. The fingertips holding his wing were grinding the crimped plating together, and he bucked futilely as they pressed down a little harder. "St…stop. Look, just…stop?" His vision blurred, and his neck didn't seem to be able to support the weight of his helm. His head fell forward again.

That gave him an unwelcome view of the ground far below, and a sound that wanted to be whimper croaked out of his vocalizer. He reset his optics, scrambling through his system menus to reset _everything_, and tried to be logical. He needed to appeal to the Autobot. What he wouldn't give for a bit of Starscream's notorious charm right now!

"Look, I had to try. It's, uh, a Decepticon thing. I won't - "

"You will learn better," that voice resounded through him. The brutal sonic pulses of sheer noise bulldozed his higher functions. "You will know regret."

No. No, that didn't sound good at all. "Wh-what?" he mouthed, unable to tell if he was speaking aloud through the roaring white noise in his audios. He winched his head back up and swallowed terror along with sour, purged fuel. _Oh, Primus help me_.

Displeasure had smoothed back into a non-expression that was more frightening than anger would have been. Anger, at least, Thundercracker could have understood and tried to placate. That terrible voice dropped to a sinister, cable-strumming purr as it promised, "There will be punishment. Your wingmates will not be so disobedient. In time."

He looked down, searching automatically. The assault of noise had shifted his optical array out of sync. The ground below had become a green-brown blur, devoid of details. He couldn't see drones or wingmates, and he abruptly stopped looking when his sludgy thoughts registered just what those words meant for him.

"No," he rasped, unashamedly pleading, "wait, I - I apologize! It won't happen again!"

The gray face held its non-expression. There was neither possessiveness nor anger. That would imply some form of attachment to the broken toy dangling from the Autobot's fingers. "It is too late for apologies or promises."

"**No!**" No, no. Not good! Thundercracker weakly raised one arm, trying to claw at the red fingers on his wing. They tightened, and he kicked in involuntary response to the _crunch_ of pain. "I'm sorry!" He didn't want to die. _He didn't want to die!_ "I'm - I'm yours, right?"

The pitiable plea was duly pondered - and dismissed. "Your wingmates will be more reliable."

Far below, hands and legs pinned by eerily dispassionate Autobots who'd dislocated his wrists and knee joints, vocalizer muted by the crazy medic working inside his torso, Skywarp shivered nervously. Somewhere far away, the sound faint and carried by the wind, someone was screaming. 

* * *

><p><strong>[* * *]<strong>

**Footnotes**

**[* * *]**

* * *

><p>(1)Astrotrain spoke like that around new recruits. It was just something any Cybertronian with a deep or different enough voice learned to do automatically. It ensured new audio arrays caught on to the input of sound as well as meaning. Starscream took some sort of evil pleasure in going the complete opposite route and talking even faster.<p>

(2)It also wasn't unusual for the combiner teams to retain enough individuality to engage in arguments while combined. Thundercracker had never heard it happen in combat - probably because combat was the one thing that could force a gestalt into a full merge - but the Decepticons were used to Devastator's torso sniping acid commentary at his own limbs. Both of Bruticus' legs seemed to like singing bad pop songs when not in action, just to annoy his other three components. Menasor was even worse. His separate components were an ongoing test of the Decepticons collective patience on a normal day, but then they combined and kept garbling random vowels as they fought Motormaster for control of Menasor's vocalizer.

(3)Strangely, if the other Decepticons mocked him long or loud enough, they always seemed to get transferred to the worst bases on Cybertron, or take a bad tumble down an elevator shaft. Odd how that kept happening. It was a mystery. Sort of how Motormaster had mysteriously ended up in Earth's orbit after trying to assassinate Starscream that one time. Starscream had been in a strategy meeting with the officers that whole day, and Skywarp had been flirting with Long Haul at a build site. Motormaster had refused to name names, but Astrotrain, Blast Off, and Blitzwing had all sworn they hadn't made the flight themselves, and how could anybody have gotten a big mech like that up there without a shuttle mode? The perpetrator would have had to fly the Stunticon, kicking and screaming and dangling by one leg, all the way up out of the atmosphere…but that was crazy. Who'd want to do that?


End file.
